Hearts
by Wandering Storyteller
Summary: Torchwood learns of a girl with two hearts at the local hospital. There will be new chapters now
1. Chapter 1

Hearts: Chapter One

Owen set down the phone, "Oi, Jack, we got a call from the hospital, something about a girl with two hearts. It sounds like another mild mutation caused by the rift, probably like that toddler last month with the three lungs. Want me to go check it out?"

Jack dropped the folder he was holding sending papers tumbling across the floor. "Did you really say two hearts?"

"Yeah, so?"

Without bothering to pick up the papers Jack was already heading to door. "If this girl is what I think she is, I need to meet her in person."

The nurse that led them to the room was a very chatty young woman. It was proof of Jack's distraction that he didn't attempt to flirt with her. "So why was the patient brought in? Is she hurt?"

"Not badly. Her name is Kate. Poor dear was in a car accident. It would have just been a fender bender, but the airbag didn't deploy and she hit her head on the passenger side dashboard. Knocked her clean out. The paramedics brought her straight here." The nurse paused outside the patient's room, wringing her hands. "When she got here, the doctors started to notice certain things about her weren't quite right. Her body temperature was incredibly low, so low you would think she was dead. It was her heartbeat that really scared them though. At first they thought it was just irregular, then the doctors realized she and two distinct heartbeats. That's when we called you. That's what you told us to do last time after that baby with three lungs."

"Just as you were supposed to. We'll handle it from here." Jack smiled at the nurse and pushed the door open.

A groggy twelve-year-old blinked at him from a bed across the room. She had fairly cute features in a pre teen sort of way, although a large and purplish bruise on her forehead marred them. Her nose was still rounded with childhood, and slight freckles dotted her cheeks. Her curly red hair surrounded her head like a halo of tangled tulips. She sat up on bony elbows watching the strangers apprehensively.

Jack felt his heart sink. Whoever she was, she clearly wasn't the Doctor in any disguise, shape, or form, nor was she related to him. Although it was not an ability he broadcasted, since people in the twenty first century tended to be alienated by it, he could recognize people by the scent of their pheromones. There was something vaguely reminiscent of a Time Lord about Kate, but she smelled vaguely human too.

Owen stepped from behind Jack and walked towards the bed. "Hi, I'm Doctor Harper. Do you mind if I examine you, Kate?" he said holding up a stethoscope.

"Yes."

"Well tough." The girl tried to scoot away but a wave of dizziness hit her. Owen barely got the trashcan under her before she threw up. Once the spasms subsided he helped her lean back gently. "Take it easy, whatever species you are you've definitely got a concussion. No quick movements for a while."

"I don't think I could if I wanted too. My head really hurts," she grumbled, closing her eyes.

Owen retrieved an ice pack for her then pressed his stethoscope against her breastbone on the left, and then on the right. He held up her wrist and took her pulse. He stuck a thermometer in her mouth, which she was too tired to spit out. Owen frowned and looked up at Jack. "Everything the nurse said is true. She's definitely not fully human. Do you have any idea what she might be?"

"None of your business!" snapped a woman from the doorway. She was clearly the girl's mother, and trailed a waist-length mane of the same fiery hair. She stormed into the room, placing herself between the strangers and her daughter. "I don't know who you are, but you've got no right to come in here and bother my daughter. Especially after she has been hurt."

Jack looked down at the shorter woman a half smile on his face. She was the attractive sort, aside from her owlish glasses. Jack would normally have tried to flirt with her, except over the centuries of his existence he had learned hitting on an angry mother was a very, very bad idea. "Actually we do. We're Torchwood, and it's our job to investigate aliens in Great Britain. Now would you care to tell me why your daughter seems to be part Time Lord, and you're seeping with matrix energy?"

The woman went pale. "Rodageit said you would find us someday. Oh for the love of God please don't tell them about us."

Jack's expression softened. "Tell who?"

The woman cocked her head to the side in confusion. "The Gallifreyan government. You work for them don't you? You are a Time Lord aren't you?"

Jack shook his head. "I'm human, and my name is Captain Jack Harness. I work for Torchwood like I told you, and it's a British organization."

The woman's body went limp with relief, "So you won't tell the Gallifreyan government about us."

Jack frowned. "I couldn't if I wanted to. All of Gallifrey is gone. The Time Lords are mostly extinct."

"Oh," said the woman very quietly.

Jack turned to Owen. "Keep an eye on Kate will you? Just make sure the doctors don't try to give her any medicine. It could be toxic to her. I need to have a conversation with her mother so we can sort this out."

Owen shrugged. "Sure, it's not like I don't have more important things to do at the hub that baby-sit a sick alien preteen."

"Owen."

"Fine, fine, go have your talk."

Jack led Kate's mother from the room towards one of the empty hospital lounges where he knew they would not be disturbed, stopping along the way to filch two cups of tea from the nurses' station. A good cup of tea could often be just as effective as a truth drug, if applied properly. He gave the woman the paper cup and they sat down. She was calmer now, and if anything more wary.

"So tell me about yourself," Jack said, offering one of his heart-stopping smiles. The woman did not look amused. He tried again. "Your name might be a good place to start."

"My name is Janice Caylan and that's all I'm going to say until I'm certain I can trust you."

Jack leaned forward. "How do I get you to trust me? Torchwood means your daughter no harm; we just want to know who she is. We only worry about dangerous aliens, and she looks like the shy sort."

"Telling me what you know about the Time War would be a good place to start."

"I don't know much, just what the Doctor hinted at."

"Who's the Doctor?"

"A Time Lord I used to travel with."

Janice's eyes narrowed with suspicion. "I thought you said they were mostly extinct."

"They are--he's the only one left. The Time War with the Daleks went badly. In the end the Doctor had to destroy both races to save the universe."

Janice's shoulders slumped. "I thought maybe the Time Lords went back on their word and imprisoned Rodageit, or that he died during the course of the war. I never quiet imagined mass genocide." She looked up with tearful eyes. "I don't suppose this Doctor is a tall, mad scientist sort who tends to accidentally blow stuff up, is he? Wavy black hair, gray eyes, speaks with a strong Irish accent? Loves coffee, hates tea, won't eat sweets?"

Jack shook his head slowly. Janice slumped again scrunching her eyes shut. "I didn't think so. Rodageit wasn't the sort to purposely harm anyone, certainly not an entire race." After a moment she straightened up, drying her eyes. "Enough blubbering; I accepted his death long ago. It's just a bit hard to finally know for certain."

"This Rodageit, he was Kate's father?"

"Yes. We were married."

"How did you meet him?"

"I used to live in out in the countryside. One night I was out for a walk on the moor when I thought I saw a falling star, except it kept burning when it hit the earth. I ran to it and found a man and a ruined sort of metal box. The man was very badly hurt, and in so much pain, and scared. He couldn't really tell me anything before he died. I held him as he went cold, but then all of a sudden he was flooded with a golden light, and changed into a different man. I was exposed to a lot of matrix energy then, being so close to him when he regenerated. Rodageit thought that was why I was able to get pregnant with Kate later on. He said normally Time Lords can't or won't crossbreed with other species, but the matrix energy I absorbed made me compatible. But I'm getting ahead of myself--we didn't even marry for several years. When he woke up in his new body he was a bundle of energy, as if he hadn't just died. He was quite sad about his box, though--said it was dead. He called it a TARDIS. He said he was running from his own species, the Time Lords, that in trying to capture him they had shot his TARDIS and it sort of crashed through time and space."

"Did he ever say why he was running from the Time Lords?"

Janice bit her lip. "Well, I never quite understood that. It had something to do with breaking the rules of time and space. He helped someone live who wasn't supposed to, and caused a hole in reality or maybe a vortex--he wasn't good at explaining it." She sipped at her tea. "So anyway, he was stuck on earth. I think he rather liked it actually. He didn't have any money, or ID or anything, so I let him stay in my home." Janice smiled. She had a good smile, not too broad, but playful and warm. "I'd spent my entire adult life writing science fiction novels. How do you think I felt finally meeting a real alien?"

"You fell madly in love."

"Yeah, predictable, I know. Took him a while to figure it out though. Time Lords aren't a very sexual species. Rodageit told me once that they reproduced with looms, instead of biologically. Most of the time he was too busy blowing up the garden shed with one of his inventions to notice anything around him. Not that they ever worked out, really, not how he meant them to, anyway. He tried to fix the toaster once, made the most incredible radio machine. We could get music from distant galaxies.

"Sooner or later, though, we sorted things out, fell in love and all that. He got very worried when I got pregnant with Kate. First because he was amazed it was possible and was worried something might go wrong. Then because he realized how bad it would be if the other Time Lords ever found us.

"When he first ran away, he was in trouble, and they might have taken a regeneration or two from him if they caught him, but that was it. But if they found out he fell in love with a human they would have thought he was mad or sick. Time lords hardly become involved with each other, much less other species. It would seem to them the way it would seem to us like a human loving a goldfish. For a time lord to have a child with a human would have been an abomination to them.

"He said that if the Time Lords ever found him they would lock him away forever in an asylum, they would make me forget him, and probably kill Kate. That's why he panicked you see, when a Time Lord did find him."

"When?" asked Jack. "Eleven years ago, when Kate was just a tiny baby. I'm not sure how they found us. One morning we were all sitting out in the garden when there was a whooshing sound and a big box in the shape of garden shed appeared. A man in the oddest set of robes with a high collar stepped out. "He told Rodageit not to run, that he wasn't there to arrest him. His name was Tovik and his job was to find all rogue Time Lords. Gallifrey was at war with the Daleks and everyone was being called home to help. If Rodageit came with him he'd be granted full amnesty. Rodageit didn't want to go with him. Tovik got angry. He threatened to tell the other Time Lords about Kate and me. He was smart; it didn't take him more than a glance to figure out we were Rodageit's family. Rodageit had to go along to protect us. He promised to come back as soon as he could. He never did.

"I waited for weeks, months, years. For the longest time I held onto hope, waited to hear the sound of a TARDIS. I knew he wouldn't abandon Kate and me; he loved us too much. He was scatterbrained, and foolish, but fiercely loyal. I finally had to accept that the only thing that could have kept him away from us was death." Janice sipped at her tea, not seeming to have noticed that it had long since gone cold. "That's all there is to tell really."

"Does anyone else know Rodageit was a Time Lord, or that Kate isn't completely human?"

"No."

"Does Kate know what she is?"

"Oh of course. She can't remember her father, but I've told her about him. She's seen the inventions he left. She's been able to fix some of the less successful ones too. She made the loveliest flying teakettle"

Jack raised an eyebrow, "Does she cause stuff to blow up too?"

Janice grinned. "No, Kate is a good bit more practical than her father; she takes cause and effect into consideration."

"So no risk of her accidentally destroying the world, opening a portal to another planet, or anything else Torchwood needs to worry about?"

"Not on my watch."

Jack set down his cup and stood, stretching. "Alright then. The two of you seem like your keeping a low profile and not causing any trouble. I'll see to it that the hospital doesn't give you any trouble." Jack paused to jot down a number on a scrap of paper. "If Kate ever gets hurt again and needs a doctor call this number. I can get her treated at my headquarters without the trouble you had here."

Janice stood as well. "Thank you. One last thing though, are you going to tell this Doctor person about Kate?"

Jack paused, "Well I don't really have a way to contact him, at least not easily."

"Good. I don't want him to know about Kate. If he destroyed the Time Lords that means he probably killed Rodageit. I don't want him near my daughter."

Jack flinched at the insult against the Doctor. He didn't defend him, though. The look in Janice's eyes was too cold, too burned with grief.

She saw Jack's hesitation. She grabbed his hand in hers, sharp nails biting into the skin. "Promise me you won't tell him."

"I can't do that. He deserves to know he's not alone."

Jack tried to pull away but she hung on "If that murderer comes near my daughter or me I will kill him!" Years of pent up frustration and anger burst from her voice. She needed someone to blame for the death of her husband. The Doctor fit that role. Jack had no doubt she could make good on her threat. He was glad he hadn't told her any more about him.

"You have my word that I will see to it that he stays away from you and your daughter."

Janice released him, the sudden fire receding from her eyes. "That is acceptable." She straitened her skirt and brushed her hair from her eyes. "It's been a long day. If it's alright I'd like to take my daughter home."

"Yes of course. We'll call you if we have any more questions." The woman turned without saying anything more and set off down the hall, her practical flat shoes making a steady click against the tile floor. Jack ran his hand through his hair with an exasperated sigh. Well, that had gone bad quickly. He had wanted to talk to Kate, but now that didn't look like an option. Not without upsetting Janice more. It would be best just give things time. Once Kate was an adult he could offer to help her contact the Doctor if she wanted to meet him. Surely she would want to meet another Time Lord. How hard it must be to know next to nothing about one's own biology or cultural history. Jack knew quite well what it was like not know the nature of his own body.


	2. Chapter 2

Hearts Chapter 2

Hearts Chapter 2

--Six Months Later--

It had not been a good morning at Torchwood, what with the multiple weevil sightings, the rodents of unusual size in the sewer and the coffee machine breaking. Jack was sipping dejectedly at a cup of tea when Tosh knocked on his office door.

"Hey Jack. You know how you asked me to monitor that house on the outskirts of the city for any unusual activity?"

Jack set his tea down and nodded slowly.

"The computers just picked up some sort of brief energy surge. Also a police report just came in about neighbors hearing an explosion, something about the Caylan girl blowing up the garden shed again."

Jack scrambled to his feet. His mind running through all the worrisome things an adolescent time lord might have done to cause a small explosion. It seemed Kate was more prone to mad scientist antics than her mother had admitted. He hoped she was all right. He quickly gathered up the team and headed out.

A quarter of an hour later the torchwood van arrived on scene. It was a small old house well on the outskirts of Cardiff, surrounded by a sturdy wooden fence and sizable flower garden. They found Kate in the back garden spraying a large charred metal box with a fire extinguisher and cursing angrily in welsh. Her mane of fiery hair was thoroughly singed and her goggles and a green rubber lab coat were covered in dark smudges.

"You okay kid?" called Jack.

She gave the box one final blast of foam and set the fire extinguished down. "Yes Captain Jack, I'm unhurt." Now that she knew Jack was not a malevolent Time Lord she was considerably friendlier towards him. She pulled off her goggles revealing a raccoon like ring of unsmudged skin around her eyes. She ran a hand through her hair, wincing at the crinkling sound the burnt ends made. "I can't say the same for my hair though. My mom is going to kill me."

"From the looks of it your lucky this didn't," said Owen pointing at the smoking box.

"Nice to know your still a git Doctor Harper," she said smiling. She wriggled out of her lab coat and examined the melted bits. "You might be right though. This really didn't go according to plan. I had no idea the inner workings of the TARDIS would combust when I tried to revive them."

Jack was taken aback. "Your mother said your Father's TARDIS was beyond repair. What are you doing mucking about with it?"

"Speaking of which where is your mother. Does she know what your up to?" added Gwen giving Kate a stern look.

Kate sat down to pull at a partly melted rain boot. "Oh she's out of town. I wouldn't try this if she were about. She doesn't like me messing with the TARDIS, she thinks it's too dangerous. You're not going to tell her are you?" After Kate made several unsuccessful tugs, Gwen sat down next to Kate and gave her a hand.

Jack rolled his eyes. "That has yet to be seen. Now what exactly were you trying to do?"

The boot came off with a loud pop sending Gwen and Kate tumbling backward. Kate sat back up and started on the second boot. "Like I said I was trying to fix my Father's TARDIS. He told my mom it was broken, and he couldn't fix it. But he was rubbish at fixing things. I read up on some of the books he left and figured out the TARDIS wasn't dead, just in a sort of deep healing sleep."

"Wait? You can read Gallifreyan?"

"Yea, it took me a while, but eventually I managed to figure it out. So anyway I thought I knew how to wake it up. Seems like it wasn't so happy about it though."

"You're going to try again?" asked Ianto giving the box a wary glance.

"Soon as I figure out what I did wrong." With a final tug the second boot came off. Kate flexed her foot, reassuring herself that all toes were present and accounted for.

Jack frowned. "I don't think you working on this on your own is a good idea."

Kate looked up at him curtly. "Well I'm still going to, and you can't stop me."

"We could take your TARDIS. What with being a big powerful secret organization and all," said Owen.

"You have no right!" She sprang to her feet looking about desperately with her ashy raccoon eyes. "You can't take it away. It's the only thing my father left me. Without it I'll have to spend my whole life on this boring planet!"

"Hey earth isn't that boring," protested Jack. Kate glared at him. Jack held up his hands. "Calm down, I won't take the TARDIS. I just don't want you blowing yourself up or opening a hole in time. How about we help you? Torchwood has a lot of resources. With your natural aptitude we might be able to fix the TARDIS or at least figure out how it works. Hopefully with fewer fires."

Kate glanced at the box and then at her signed hair. "And when it's finished will you take it, or leave it to me? I've heard about you lot. You're always grabbing up alien artifacts."

Jack was sorely tempted to take the TARDIS. It would be an incredibly useful tool for Torchwood. On the other hand it was far too advanced for this time period or for humans in general. It was probably be best to learn what they could from it and then leave it with the girl. She had a biological right to it.

"I promise we won' take it."

"Alright then. But what about my mom, are you going to tell her?"

Jack gave her a mischievous shrug. "Well I don't see that we have to tell her about today's accident if you can hide it. We'll need an excuse to come back work with the TARDIS though. I could say Torchwood just want to study it and not mention anything about the repairs."

Kate nodded. "I think she'll agree to that." She extended her hand to Jack and he took it.

"I believe we have ourselves a deal."

Janice provided less resistance than expected in allowing the access to the TARDIS. She seemed to have warmed up towards Torchwood now that she was sure they posed no threat to her or her daughter. If anything she seemed fascinated by them and constantly pestered them for information about the aliens they dealt with.

Jack at first told her it was all classified, but when she proved to know more about certain species and artifacts than he did he gave up and told her anything that wasn't incredibly confidential. Janice had already been married to an alien; she could clearly keep a secret.

Janice even seemed a bit glad that Torchwood was providing a free babysitting service and distracting Kate from her usual habit of slightly volatile experiments. She told Jack, "I don't think you'll be able to find out much. That box really is just a burned out shell, but I won't stop you from looking it over. Just be careful and don't trample on the garden or cause any fires. Kate can play with you lot once she's done with her homework."

Despite a promising start the TARDIS did not prove very easy to repair. Kate worked largely with Tosh and Jack, Tosh for her computer skills, Jack for his knowledge of alien technology. They usually worked on afternoons or weekends when either Tosh or Jack had time or just needed a break from dealing with more serious matters.

Jack found it odxdly comforting to spend time with Kate and her mother. Torchwood made it so easy to forget that there were still people out there just living their lives in peace. It was good to watching a child growing into a young woman.

After a few months of study Tosh was able to create an alternate power source that could bring some of the mechanical parts of the TARDIS back on line. The biological heart of the TARDIS remained slumbering and impenetrable. The chameleon circuit remained broken, and TARDIS maintained its outer appearance of a singed box.

It's insides however sprung back to life. With the revival of it's mechanical parts the TARDIS became once again bigger on the inside, and allowed the access to the rooms that had not been destroyed in the crash.

Many of these were of little interest, a kitchen with an interesting fungus colony in its refrigerator, an unremarkable bathroom aside from its yellow ducky shower curtain, a plain bedroom, and mildly interesting wardrobe. Who would have thought one Time Lord could have collected so many socks.

It was the library and the lab that proved fascinating. The lab was full of half built things, most of which were best left alone, or at least not casually poke at. Jack had to go through and separate all the dangerous, and reactive chemicals that had been left too close together. He managed not to get killed, but after a close call with a poisonous gas, he was glad he had done it instead of his considerably more mortal team members.

He had to wonder what regeneration Kate's father had been on, and how many had been the result of careless mistakes. It wasn't that any of Rodageit's inventions had malice intent; it was just that they were volatile, pushing the rules of chemicals, mechanics, and physics. Clearly the man hadn't had a smidgen of common sense, or self-preservation instinct.

The library at least proved more benign. It was full of books from countless planets and times in countless languages. Because the heart of the TARDIS still slumbered it could not help them read any of the books that were not in earth languages. However with the help of a translating program from the Hub and Jack's knowledge of a few more common alien languages Tosh, Jack and Kate set about studying the library. They soon realized it mostly consisted of technical manuals, and journals of experimental science. It was not exactly the great the window into the universe Kate had been hoping for.

Kate had some use for the technical manuals but she found the journals useless. As she said to Jack, "A third of them describe impossible things, a third are incorrect, and a third are just silly. I mean honestly, why would I want to make an atom tap dance, or turn gold blue?"

Kate however did not tell Torchwood about her greatest discovery. Jack came upon her one afternoon sitting in the shade of one of the gardens trees reading something. She set the book down quickly upon seeing his approach. Jack noticed.

"What ya reading?" Jack said sitting down beside her companionably.

"Nothing much"

Jack used his superior arm length to lean around her and snatch up the notebook. It had a simple brown leather cover. It's pages were worn smooth around the edges from use.

"Hey give that back!" snapped Kate.

Jack smiled mischievously, "well you certainly seem to care a lot about it for it to be nothing? Is this your diary, full of your secrets? Things you haven't told your mother, grudges you keep against your friends, boys you fancy? Girls you fancy?" He playfully held it out of Kate's reach. She bit her lip and said nothing.

He flipped the notebook open and was about to pretend to read it when he noticed that it was written in a strange alphabet he really couldn't read. The script tumbled across the page in a fluid scrolling script that could not possibly belong to the messy adolescent.

Jack snapped it shut and handed it back to Kate, with an odd sense that he had trespassed on something sacred. Kate held it protectively against her flat chest glaring at him.

"What is it?" he asked softly.

"My father's journal. I found it in a hidden compartment in the cabinet by his bed."

"and you don't want me to see it?"

"I don't want Torchwood to see it, and you are Torchwood. This isn't a technical journal. It's a record of his life before he came to earth. It's got his private thoughts. Strangers shouldn't read those."

"I wouldn't ask to," said Jack quietly. They sat for a moment in silence.

"So was he the man you thought he was?"

"Kate stared at her feet. "He was selfish and very self-centered. He didn't care about anyone beside himself, regardless of the consequences. Some of the things he talks about in here sound unethical."

Jack placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "You know he probably changed a lot when he came to earth an met your mother."

Kate looked up at jack her granite grey eyes pained. "How much can anyone really change?"

"Quiet a bit. I used to be a conman and now I'm saving the world on a regular basis, or at least trying to. Well at the very least I'm keeping the weevil population down. If you live long enough life has a way of changing you."

"I want to believe that, but it's hard. The man in this journal doesn't sound like the one my mom talks about. It makes me wonder if anything she's said about him is true. What if she lied? What if she made up the whole story of him having to leave, what if he chose to abandon us! Maybe he didn't want a family. Maybe I'm the reason he left mom."

Kate wasn't the sort to cry when she was upset. A solitary childhood had taught her to keep things within herself. She drew up her knees and hugged them, hunched her skinny shoulders like a vulture and turned her gaze down. Jack drew back his hand realizing from the tension of the muscle beneath that such comfort was not welcome. Just as he had learned when a hug or a pat on the shoulder was needed, he had also learned how to tell when a person didn't want to be touched.

He spoke carefully, treading on eggshells. "I can tell you from a very reliable source that the Time War did happen, and that the Time Lords were wiped out. I can also tell you from my own judgment of human character that your mother doesn't seem to be the sort who is very good at lying. What she told me about your father sounded like the truth. You're her daughter. You know her best. Do you really think she would lie to you?"

"No, she wouldn't lie to me." She tugged absentmindedly at a strand of hair. She had cut it to a length just under her ears after the first TARDIS incident. The new look had the disconcerting affect of making her look older, less childish than her long locks had.

"It would be a lot easier if I could hate him you know."

"So you wouldn't have to grieve him?"

Kate shrugged. "Well I can never exactly grieve someone I can't remember. The thing is that over all these years the way I best know my father is by the grief he caused my mother. She's never completely gotten over him, she's always carrying this heavy pain around with her at the back of her mind. She's good at hiding it, but I know it's there"

"The way she tells the story of him leaving he sounds all noble, but sometimes I wonder if there wasn't some other way. Couldn't he have hidden, or ran, bargained with or fought the other Time Lord. Anything so that we wouldn't have to live our lives in the shadow of death."

"And yet you're trying to rebuild his TARDIS. That smacks a lot more of life than death to me."

"I just want to get off this rock."

"That's what you keep saying, but with your way with technology I suspect you could eventually create another form of transport if you really wanted to. I'm not saying your father did completely right by you or your mother, but he did protect you both. I think you respect him more than your willing to admit. Your following in his footsteps, that's why our fixing the TARDIS."

Kate's laughter was warm, like hot water across frozen hands. "You should be a psychiatrist."

"I tried that for a while. I kept ending up on the couch with my patients."

Kate uncurled herself and looked at him thoughtfully. "You know I have no idea when to take you seriously or not."

"That's the way I try to keep it." He stood stretching languidly and offered Kate a hand up, she accepted.

"So are you going to be alright?"

She shrugged noncommittally. "I usually am."

"Will you show the jounral to your mother?"

"No, I think she's better off with her memories. Let her remember my father as he was on earth, not who he was before that."

Jack nodded and turned to go. "That is probably for the best." Jack walked away leaving Kate to return to her reading. Was it just him or did everyone he knew have abandonment issues?


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Jack and Ianto were in a rather compromising position when his cell phone went off. They ignored it. It went off again. They ignored it. It went off again and Jack tumbled off the bed to retrieve it from his discarded coat, ready to curse whoever was on the other line in several distinctly non-human languages. The whole planet better be in peril.

"Jack, help! Weevils, tree, park. HELP!" Kate's hysterical voice blared from the phone. The sound of screaming, loud thumps and animal snarls echoed in the background.

"Calm down. I can't tell what your saying."

"I can't calm down a weevil's got me treed and is trying to eat me!"

"Where are you?"

"City parks, center of Cardiff, near the old castle."

"I know where that is--I'm on my way." Jack snapped the phone shut and reached for his pants. "Ianto, Kate's in trouble. Sounds like a weevil has her cornered."

Ianto already had most of his clothes on, and was straightening his tie. His ability to dress quickly never ceased to amaze Jack, or work to Jack's benefit. "Let's go. I'll call the others while were en route."

Life is full of amusing moments. The sight of two teenage girls stuck in a tree beating off a weevil with a boot was certainly one of them, or at least it would have been if Kate had not been bleeding heavily from a gouge in her arm. Jack sprang from the SUV and ran across the park yelling loudly and waving his arms at the weevil. It was hesitant to give up its trapped prey and ignored him.

Jack paused to scoop up a rock and threw it. The stone bounced off the monster's head and it turned, snarling. Jack continued to yell and wave at it. It charged him. He stood his ground and sprayed it with weevil mace. The creature shrieked and fell to the ground. While it was down Jack pounced on it and trapped its arms behind its back with handcuffs. He quickly yanked a black bag over its head. Then he paused to catch his breath.

"Kate, are you alright?"

"I'm alive."

"Her arm's hurt. I don't think she can climb down," called the second girl. For two youths who had just been facing death with nasty big pointy teeth, they sounded remarkably calm.

Jack straightened up and walked to the tree. "If you can help her lower down with her good arm I'll catch her. It's not much of a drop."

"I'll get blood on your coat," protested Kate.

Jack couldn't help but laugh. "This coat has seen worse than your blood, sweetheart. I think Ianto has figured out how to wash out anything."

"Now come on."

Carefully, with the other girl's help, Kate lowered herself off the branch and dropped ungracefully into the captain's waiting arms. The size of the ugly red bite on the pale skinny arm turned Jack's stomach. No matter how long he lived, he couldn't get used to kids getting hurt.

Kate's skin felt cold to Jack, then again it usually did. Her breathing was even, and the sounds of her twin hearts were steady. As far as Jack could tell she wasn't showing any signs of going into shock. Did Time Lords even go into shock? He had no idea.

He noticed she didn't seem to be in very much pain, despite the size and depth of the cut. Was the increased pain tolerance a Time Lord thing? She was actually smiling, glancing at something over his shoulder.

"Who are you?" The second girl had managed to climb out of the tree on her own, and was watching Jack curiously. She didn't seem completely convinced it wasn't all a weird dream.

"I'm Captain Jack Harkness. The Welshman wrangling the weevil over there is Ianto Jones." Ianto waved from where he was busy dragging the weevil towards the van.

The girl still seemed puzzled. Kate spoke. "Stephanie, they're my friends. They catch aliens, we can trust them."

"Will they help you get to a hospital?"

"We can do better than that. Were going back to hub," promised Jack.

Owen was waiting back at the hub with the autopsy bay conveniently cleared of corpses and ready for a live patient. Tosh was at her computer checking to see if there had been any rift activity. Gwen had made several cups of tea, which the group gladly accepted. With Gwen's help, Ianto took the weevil down to the cells.

Owen set straight to work on Kate's arm. He clucked over Kate's wound as he set about cleaning it.

"Jack you made this sound a lot worse over the phone. How long ago did you say this happened?"

"About a half hour."

"It's already scabbed over. This is a much faster healing rate than for a human."

"She's half Time Lord. What did you expect? Hey, don't use that antiseptic you'll make her sick, or painkillers for that matter. Janice showed me a list of medicines that are toxic to time lords, which Rodageit gave her when Kate was born. Turns out just about everything except tums is toxic or useless."

Owen rolled his eyes and set down the brown bottle with a shrug. "Sorry kid, doesn't look like there's much an uneducated human doctor can do beyond give you a bandage. You're on your own to heal."

"See Stephanie, I told you it wasn't that bad." Kate told her friend with a wink. The girl, who had been sitting on the steps tensely, visibly relaxed. Kate hopped off the table to cross the room and join her friend. She encompassed the other girl in a reassuring hug with her other arm. Interesting, Jack found himself thinking. Kate normally wasn't the sort to be physically affectionate.

"I'm used to this stuff, but it must all be really weird to you."

"A wee bit. So you're an alien?"

"Half alien."

"Cool."

Jack couldn't keep the faint grin from his face. The ability of the young to accept the impossible never ceased to amaze him. It was a shame they would have to retcon Stephanie. He walked over to Tosh's computer and asked quietly. "Any sign of rift activity?"

She looked up at him from her seat, her fingers never pausing over the computer keys. "Nothing. There's something else odd too. The park you found them in isn't an area normally prowled by weevils. They tend to avoid that end of the city. I think it has something to do with the smell from the chemical plant."

"Hm, I'm going to check something. He fetched a green device that greatly resembled a radio off one of the tables. He went back over to Kate.

"Stand up, I need to scan you." With a shrug she did. Jack ran the device through the air around her a few times and it made a steady low sound. "Just as I thought. You're sending out some sort of psychic signal."

"I am?"

"Yes. It's fairly low level though. Just a sort of loud beeping."

"I'm beeping?"

"That's probably what drew the weevil, weevils are very sensitive to psychic energy. You were doing the equivalent of jumping up and down yelling. The weevil must have been curious to find out what the signal was. When it saw that you were the source it must have decided to have a snack.

Kate ran a hand down her face in frustration. "So wait. Why am I beeping?"

Jack shrugged. "Heck if I know." The he paused and sniffed the air. Kate took a step back and looked at him funny.

"Your pheromones smell weird."

"I have pheromones?" asked Kate.

"He can smell pheromones? I don't smell anything," protested Stephanie.

"Don't take it as a personal failing--humans in your time period aren't advanced enough to consciously do so. However, most humanoid species have pheromones, including humans and Time Lords."

"And mine smell weird?"

"Kind of like pinesap."

"Why do I smell like pinesap? I don't want to smell like pinesap."

Jack cocked his head to the side thinking. Owen spoke up suddenly. "Jack we've seen something like this before. Last year when that Toretian got stuck on earth for a while."

Jack's eyes widened. "You have got to be kidding me."

Owen couldn't hide the amusement in his voice, "Well we don't know much about Time Lords, but a lot of basic patterns in the universe repeat. I think this is what it looks like. Kate's had a growth spurt in the last year, started to fill out a little, she's about the right age. It makes sense." Jack had to fight down a laugh.

Kate was getting upset at the obvious amusement the two seemed to having on her behalf. "What, what's wrong with me!"

Jack clapped her on the shoulder. "Congratulations, you've hit puberty."

Kate blushed red as an apple and did not look amused. "What the hell does puberty have to do with sending out psychic signals, or smelling like pinesap?"

"Yeah, that's not what they talked about in health class," added Stephanie.

"She's not human. She obviously won't have the same biological cycles," said Owen.

Kate paused to think. She sat back down on the steps and covered her face. "God this is embarrassing. "So I'm like what, in heat? I don't feel any different. I'm not a bloody cat."

"No, you're a half Time Lord. I'm sure this would be a lot more interesting if some of them were still around. Your psychic signals and pheromones would affect other Time Lords, but they don't affect humans. The species are too different. We might not have even noticed this if a weevil hadn't tried to eat you."

"Well that's reassuring. So how long is this going to last, and how often is it going to happen?"

Jack shrugged his shoulders, so did Owen. "I haven't the faintest idea."

Owen snapped his fingers suddenly. "If we did regular bio scans on you we could probably figure it out." He rummaged through cabinets for a moment and came up with something that bore a great resemblance to a game boy. When he pointed it at Kate she quickly scooted away.

"Is that alien technology? Do you even know if it's safe? I've seen what happens when you mess with other things like that precision scalpel."

"Don't worry. Jack told me it was just a piece of human future medical technology that fell through the rift. Perfectly safe."

With an exasperated sigh Kate stepped forward and let herself be scanned. Owen read off the readings and began to jot stuff down on a chart. They all looked at him expectantly.

"Well?"

"Basically it's as we predicted. Elevated hormone levels, the whole lot. Come back tomorrow and we can see if anything has changed. Just do so during the day, weevils don't come out then."

Kate slumped dejectedly back to the steps. "My life is weird." Stephanie gave her a reassuring hug. She had the look of a girl well out of her element amidst all the discussion of alien biology. She knew what to do with an upset friend, even if Kate seemed beyond consolation.

The unhappiness of her expression cut into Jack's amusement at the situation. They had just had the sort of conversation Kate should normally have with her mother, or failing that, maybe Gwen. Except Janice or Gwen wouldn't really be able to explain a thing to Kate about female Time Lord biology. It couldn't be easy for a teenage girl to have her fertility cycle explained to her by two men, to have something biological and intimate dragged out into the open. In a society that still had a taboo against discussing the female menstrual cycle around men, going into heat was a whole new level of awkward.

Jack sat down by the girls. "I'm sorry this is so embarrassing for you." Kate gave him a tired look. "This isn't something to be upset about. Growing up is something to celebrate."

"You would say that about a thing this awkward and embarrassing," snapped Kate.

"No seriously," Jack held up his hands to silence her protests. "Where I come from in the fifty first century you would get a party with cake, presents, annoying relatives, special music and cultural dances, that sort of stuff." He leaned back. "I just don't get this century. Humans are so weird about their bodies and sexualities here. What a sad way to approach something so wonderful."

Kate found a smile working it's way onto her lips in spite of herself. Jack had a way of making problems stop seeming like the end of the world, probably because he had been there and back.

Ianto and Gwen chose this moment to return. Ianto had a tray with what appeared to be root beer floats. "I didn't know we had any ice-cream in the hub." Jack whispered in Ianto's ear as Ianto handed him one.

"I see to it that we are prepared for all eventualities sir." Jack raised an eyebrow. Ianto elaborated in a whisper. "There's a mini fridge in one of the vaults were I keep food I don't want Owen to nick." He set down the now empty tray and turned to speak to Kate.

"Miss Caylan, I've contacted your mother. She should be here soon to pick you and your friend up." He paused, looking uncertain. "I told her about the Weevil attack. I hope that's alright."

Kate took a glass. "Yeah, I guess so. It would have been hard to keep it from her, what with the big bite on my arm. She's never going to let me out at night again though."

"Probably for the best," said Gwen in a surprising motherly tone. "What were you two doing alone in a park at seven at night anyway?"

"It was a shortcut to the movie theater," said Stephanie quickly over a bite of ice cream.

"The entrance to the theater is on the other side," said Gwen.

"Er." Kate stammered. Jack shook his head laughing very softly.

"Well neither of you smell like cigarettes. So that leaves one of the only other reasons pre teenagers sneak off on their own. Let me guess--you two wanted some privacy for a quick kiss"

Both girls blushed darkly. Kate threw her arms up in despair. "I bloody give up. I have no private life anymore since I met you lot."

"Trust me, it's overrated," said Ianto reassuringly.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Stephanie of course remembered nothing about weevils or Time Lords by the next morning. Ianto's kind offer of ice cream had in fact been a fiendish way to retcon the girl. Kate realized in retrospect why Ianto had specifically handed the glasses out, making sure Stephanie got the spiked one.

Kate was angry, but there wasn't much to be done about it. She had liked the idea of Stephanie knowing who she really was; she wanted to show her the TARDIS. All the same she knew the impossibility of telling her the truth. If nothing else at least she could talk about the TARDIS with Jack and Tosh.

It was on Kate's fourth visit to the hub that she accidentally arrived during one of Owen's autopsies. She arrived as usual on her way home from school, scurrying into the hub after Ianto let her in through the tourist office. She waved hello to Jack, took a peek at what Tosh was doing on her computer, and then hopped down the steps of the surgery taking them two at a time, as was her habit.

She froze abruptly in mid leap, hand clenched on the rail. She took in a sharp breath, letting it out as a muffled squeak as the meaty sweet smell of death hit her. She had only ever seen bodies made up in funeral homes, never the stiff limbed, ugly grayness of true death. It didn't help that the man laid out on the table had been the victim or a particularly violent murder; his head half smashed in, one shoulder half torn from his body. Owen looked up from where his hands were buried in the chest cavity and cursed. Kate shook her head and the bolted. She made it to one of the upstairs wastebaskets before she threw up.

Jack stormed down the steps a moment late. "Owen what the hell is wrong with you? I know you have the bedside manner of an exacerbated vole, but even you should know better than to let a thirteen year old see a body."

While Owen might have apologized before, Jack's anger now made him defensive. "Oh, get over yourself, Jack. It's not like the kid's an innocent to the evils of the world; she was perfectly able beat off a weevil with a boot. I think she can cope with a dead human."

Jack threw up his hands in frustration, "What she can and can't cope with isn't the point. We have no right to make her deal with any more trauma than necessary. Honestly Owen, have a little compassion. Cover the body with a sheet next time, alright?"

"Fine."

Jack gave him another sharp look and stomped back up the steps. Owen took his time removing his spattered autopsy coat, and putting his normal lap coat back on. When he figured enough time had elapsed for everyone to calm down he picked up the scanner and headed upstairs.

For someone who was supposed to be traumatized, Kate seemed remarkably calm, if a tad more pale than usual. She sat on the Torchwood couch with a cup of hot cocoa in her hand and a hovering Gwen fussing over her.

Gwen shot Owen a dirty look and then headed back to her own desk. Kate smiled weakly at Owen. "You seem to have an alarming talent to make me to vomit."

"At least I'm good at something."

"I'm sorry I reacted like that."

"Well don't let it bruise your pride. I turned green as a tree frog on my first day in the dissection lab back in medical school."

"You always reminded me more of a gecko."

"Hey!"

Kate quickly switched topics. "I heard Jack yelling at you. Was he very angry?"

"A bit, mostly just indignant on your behalf. He likes playing the protective big brother. He only really has about three ways of relating to people; he flirts with them, protects them, or fights them. One or all are fine with him so long as he gets to be in charge."

"I guess you fall into the 'fights with' category."

"Wouldn't want to be in the other two," said Owen with a shrug. "Now stand up I want to get this scan done before I forget what I came upstairs for."

Kate stood and Owen ran the scanner over her a few times, then jotted down the numbers and words that appeared on the screen. "Congratulations. You are no longer loudly broadcasting your status as an eligible Time Lord female."

"Glad that's over with. I don't like the idea of being on the radar of every psychic species around, especially if there are more carnivorous ones like weevils out there. I really hope this thing is not going to be every month like it is for humans"

"I doubt it. Species that go into heat usually only do it once or twice a year, at least on earth. We can fall back to scanning you once every week now. If your hormones don't shift, we might even be able to do this every month."

"Can I still come to the hub?"

"You'll have to ask Jack about that."

--

"It's alive!" Jack looked up to see Kate running into the hub. Ever since the night of the weevil attack it had proven almost impossible to keep her out of the hub. Every day for several weeks afterwards, and now once a month she had had to visit so Owen could run a scan on her in the hopes of figuring out how her hormone cycles worked. To make life easier for everyone, Jack had taught Kate how to get into the hub on her own through the tourist office. Kate had seemed to take this as an open invitation to visit the hub any time she wanted, often darting in on her way home from school to chat with Tosh about technology, say high to Jack, talk to Gwen, annoy Owen, or hit up Ianto for a snack. As pleasant as the teen's company was, her continued presence in the hub worried Jack. The hub had repeatedly been the center of trouble in the past and he didn't want to girl caught in the crossfire. On a more practical level she was also hurting company efficiency. The team found the teenager to be a very tempting reason to take a break from paper work, and some reports weren't getting filed.

Kate leaned against the railing trying to catch her breath. She was still wearing her much-singed lab coat, and her blue goggles bounced around her neck. Her red hair was sticking up at odd angles that could only be achieved by pulling several consecutive all nighters.

"What's alive?" asked Jack hoping it wasn't another slime monster. Two in one week had been more than enough.

"The TARDIS!"

Tosh's head popped up from behind her computer. "You finally woke it up?"

Kate nodded excitedly, "Yeah. I tried that reboot combination I found in one of the manuals. It worked. The whole ship is humming on the inside and the chameleon circuit is even working again. It looks like a garden shed."

Tosh was on her feet in an instant heading for the door. "I have got to see this."

"As do I," agreed Jack snatching his coat up off a chair. "Gwen, you're in charge while I'm gone. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"That doesn't consist of much."

"Exactly."

When they arrived at Kate's home there was indeed a new garden shed. It was also on the opposite side of the garden than it had been before.

"Did you take it for a test drive?" asked Jack suspiciously.

"Maybe. Not through time and space or anything, just across the garden. I didn't even teleport; I flew it, perfectly safe."

"You said that about pushing the blue button on the TARDIS console, and you know what that caused," said Tosh.

Kate rolled her eyes. "All I did was cause it to snow."

"In July, over exactly one city block. We had fun explaining that to the weather station."

"Whatever, come see." Kate grabbed Tosh's hand and pulled her towards the TARDIS. It was alive and beeping inside. The center consul hummed with energy and glowed with a sort of golden light. It rather reminded Jack of the Doctor's TARDIS, but without the coral, and a bit more singed looking. They still hadn't found a way to scrub the ash of the ceiling.

"Oh you were right, this is so exciting!" gushed Toshico, pushing her glasses into place and darting around the room to look at the flashing lights. "Show me which controls you used to move the TARDIS."

Kate pointed at a mix of levers and knobs, one of which rather looked like a car steering wheel. "Well these are simple forward, back and sideways controls. I think this lever here lets it levitate." Jack's hand clamped over hers when she reached for it.

"Let's make sure your damn certain of that before you try it. Torchwood has a strained enough relationship with the local weather station as it is."

"Aw, your no fun." Kate grumbled.

"Sorry, Kate. This is a time machine, not a toy. No more test-drives until you can convince me you're absolutely sure you know how it works."

"Well I kind of know, and I'm very good at figuring things out."

"Not well enough yet," said Tosh, giving Kate and apologetic look. "This is alien technology. If anything goes wrong and you end up in the wrong time or place, we might not be able to help you. Jack's not saying you can't ever fly the TARDIS. He just wants you to familiarize yourself some more with the instruction manual first. I'll help."

Kate sighed. She looked disappointed but not crest fallen. A bit like a child just given a guitar who has discovered there is more to learning to play it than just hitting the strings. "Well alright"

Jack smiled. "So do I have your word this ship won't move form this spot until I say so."

"Yes. You have my word. Although I still say this proves your turning into a boring old man."

"You don't know the half of it kid."


	5. Chapter 5

Authors Note: Dear Readers thank you for being patient. I will once again be working on the story and there should be a new chapter every few days. Also do be warned that the story will become a bit darker in the coming chapters.

Chapter 5

The small body lay on the autopsy table, partly decayed by its time in the bay. Facial features or gender were almost impossible to tell now, but the remnants of the pink dress suggested it had been a little girl. The child's relative age and matted black hair, matched the description of Eliza Jacobs, the fifth child to die over the last week in the city.

Torchwood, out of general policy, would never seize the remains of a child if they could help it. This was not because of any noble intentions but more a way to avoid trouble. There were always too many complications, too many parents that wouldn't rest until they could see their child properly buried.

It was because of this that Jack and Owen found themselves in the city morgue, observing a mortician perform the autopsy. The stench of liquid decay hung heavy in the air, despite the exhaust fan. Owen observed the procedure with medical objectivity, arms crossed, dark eyes sharp. So long as he thought of it as "the body" and not what it had once been he would be all right.

Jack was not faring so well. He had his face mostly hidden by his hands, his back leaning heavily against the support of the wall. His stomach turning as he fought down the urge to bolt from the room. Normally he was fine with bodies, he could watch Owen do an autopsy on an adult without batting an eye. But this was the one sort of death he could never come to terms with. He could live a thousand years, see death in all of it cruel and kind forms, but the sight of a young life cut off still shattered him.

"So you're sure she drowned?" he asked the doctor.

The mortician nodded. "Well she has no broken bones, or any other remaining signs of violence. The fluid in the lungs seems consistent with that theory."

"But you're not entirely certain?" asked Owen, uncrossing his arms.

"She was in the water to long for her cause of death to be completely clear. I still don't see how this is related to your usual spooky dooes."

The medical examiner was a highly attractive young man in an underfed sort of Welsh way. Under normal circumstance Jack would have flirted with him shamelessly. That sort of thought was rather far from his mind at the moment though. He shifted to his usual dealing with civilians voice. "It might not be. This was simply relevant to an ongoing investigation. Contact us if you find out anything else." The medical examiner agreed and Jack and Owen headed out.

They both took a deep breath of the sea breeze and oily industrial smell that so completely infused the city as they stepped out into the cool night. Anything was better than the scent of decay. Owen lit a cigarette, the only sign that this had in fact rattled him a little bit.

He had "quite" smoking years ago when he had become engaged to his now dead fiancé. Normally he was pretty good about it, but every once in a while, often after nearly being killed, he indulged. He was careful that neither Gwen nor Tosh knew about it, otherwise they would surely talk his ears off.

They walked back towards the hub along the edge of the wharf. A sudden whiff of rotten fish clenched both their stomachs tighter.

"I didn't see any evidence of alien involvement, no rift energy, not weird injuries. It was just another accidental death. The girl probably wandered off from her parents and tried to go for a swim, got caught in the rip tide," said Jack at last.

"Five kids in a week isn't normal, not for a city as small as Cardiff." Owen finished his cigarette and crushed it under his boot.

"True, but that doesn't mean alien. It could be a human serial killer, carefully covering his tracks. Either way it falls to Cardiff's finest not us."

"You really think a human could manage this?"

"Yes." There was a cool certainty is Jack's voice that chilled Owens blood. "Torchwood has wasted man-hours and resources tracking down human killers thinking they were aliens more than once in the past. We can't neglect our purpose to deal with human crimes. Unless we find some evidence of aliens, this case if closed as far as Torchwood is concerned."

P.C Andy was very certain that it was in fact somehow Torchwood's problem. He called them every time there was a new death, which was about once or twice a day.

The victims were always young, mostly children although a few preteens, and even one young teenager. The deaths always seemed accidental but were always suspicious. The child just wandered into traffic, the child just fell of the porch and broke it's neck, the child decided to investigate the wall socket with a fork. It was as if a basic impulse control or common sense had somehow been weakened.

The deaths were too often witness by parents or teachers for them to have been caused by strangers. This was odd since parents and teachers tend to naturally be good about protecting their children from accidents, yet in every case the guardian had been distracted, or had left the room for a moment.

The media of Cardiff became quickly convince this was a serial killer, never mind that the cause of death didn't match that.

Jack quickly had to admit that, unless the parents of Cardiff had all turned homicidal against the offspring, something was up. He investigated the parents, and had Tosh scan them. Yet there was no sign of rift activity, or anything strange.

There first lead came with a call from the hospital. A seven year old boy had survived three accidents in the course of one day. First he had run into the street chasing a ball, and as often happens in such situations, he got hit by a car. Surprisingly this wasn't completely fatal as the driver saw him in time, and ended up hitting him nearly at a crawl, and the child was only injured but not killed.

He was transported to the Cardiff hospital where he was given the wrong dose of a powerful medicine by a seasoned physician, who could give no explanation for his mistake later. The child lived, barely.

Later, as the child was being transported on a gurney an orderly got distracted and it nearly rolled down a flight of stairs, before a nurse, who was quick on the uptake, stopped it. These things alone wouldn't have seemed particularly note worth on their own, but combined they did.

Owen and Gwen talked to the boy while Jack interviewed the parents. In the usual manner of most traumatized seven year olds on powerful pain medication he wasn't very responsive. He answered their questions glumly.

As Gwen spoke Owen noticed a nurse enter the room. Owen could not say why exactly but an odd sense of dread and anticipation filled him. The nurse was carrying a bad of transfusion blood. She had just rigged it up to the boys IV and was about to release the clamp when Owen grabbed her hand and stopped her.

"What the hell are you doing? That bag says A positive the boy's chart say O negative you'll kill him!"

The nurse blinked as if waking from a trance. "Oh your right." Her hands fell to her sides. Owens anger was slightly calmed by the sheer looked of distress on her face. "I…I knew that. What was I thinking?"

Tosh suddenly grabbed Owens arm. "Owen!" she hissed. "There's something moving in the corner." Owen turned. There did indeed seem to be the outline of a small creature shifting in the shadows, he couldn't make it out though.

Being the inventive sort, he threw the television remote from the bedside table at it. The shadow flickered and vanished with a sharp hissing sound. Machines began beeping shrilly as the boy went into cardiac arrest.

Owen bolted over to the boy as the nurse called for a crash cart. It didn't do much good though. Time of death was five minutes later. Owen paced the room cursing as Doctors solemnly filed out.

Suddenly he snatched up the boy's medical chart and began to read it. After a moment he flung it down on the bed. "Why was he given such a high dose of pain medication? He only weighed eighty pounds; this chart says he had enough for a grown man. No wonder his heart stopped. Where's the attending physician!"

Meekly the bispecled old man stepped forward. "I am."

"You're a senior doctor how could you possibly prescribe the wrong dose?"

He bit his nails in a very unbecoming way. "I um… I don't know. I can remember doing it but I have no idea how I could have. Now that I look back the dose is clearly wrong, but at the time the thought just didn't connect."

Owen just stared at him for a moment then stormed from the room. Tosh followed quietly. The ride back to the hub was a solemn one as Tosh and Owen described what they had encountered.

"How do we even fight something like that?" murmured Gwen.

"It might help if we knew what it was," said Ianto.

They all glanced at Jack hopefully. He shrugged his broad shoulders. "I don't recognize it. I don't know enough yet."

"We'll figure out something." Reassured Tosh.

"We'd better I don't think Cardiff can afford any more losses." Snapped Owen.

…..

Owen had to brace himself before lifting the phone when he saw the number on the caller ID. It was the hospital. It was far too early and he was far to hung over to deal with another dead child.

Slowly he lifted up the phone and placed it against his ear, "Hello? This is Torchwood" he forced out.

"This is Dr. Black at Cardiff General." The voice was warm, middle aged and female and sounded vaguely perplexed. Every other call had come from the Hospital Administrator. "I'm calling because there was a note to contact Torchwood on the medical records of Kate Calin."

Owen's hands began to shake. "What happened?"

"She's just been admitted to the Hospital. She fell down a flight of stairs at her school. She's got a broken arm, and a fairly sever head wound. She's still unconscious"

"Has she been given any medication?"

"No. The record said not to. I don't know what you lot are playing at ordering us not to treat a teenage girl. She's hurt badly she needs saline for the head wound." The voice took on a sharp accusatory tone. No doctor liked being told not to help a patient.

Owen sighed, from the papers Kate's mom had given him he knew saline was poisonous to Time Lords. "Trust me she's a special case. Don't do anything, we'll send over some of our people strait away."

"Fine."

When Jack and Owen walked into the Hospital room Kate was already sitting up, looking about groggily. The hair on the left side of her head was matted with what was clearly dried blood from cut on her head and her left arm was in a sling. A very upset Dr. Black was urging her to lie back down.

Owen waved her away and Jack guided her from the room. Owen went to Kate, who sleepily let him look her over. He quickly checked her head, what must have once been a very nasty gash was already scabbed over. He carefully felt her arm and found the bone already begging to realign it's self and knit back together. He eyes weren't even dilated, no concussion this time then.

He gave her a half smile. "We've got to stop meeting like this."

"Don't try to be funny Owen, my head hurts to much."

"I can give you some Ibuprofen for that, it should be safe." He fished in his medical bag, took out the bottle, and shook the pills into his hand. Kate swallowed them gratefully.

"Your damn lucky your half alien, that knock on your head might have killed you if you were human."

"I almost wish it did, if that would stop the pain," she sighed closing her yes. Owen helped her lie back down onto the bed.

"How the heck did you fall down a flight of stairs kid? Your not the damsel in an old movie."

She shook her shoulders weakly. "I don't know. I dozed off in a study hall, and then I was late for a class on the first floor. I ran down the stairs, then my foot hit a puddle of water, I slipped and the next thing I knew I was here."

Owen adjusted the blankets around her. "You should have known better than to be that careless, but I'm not really one to talk. Anyway you'll be better in couple days or so. I'll call your mom to come get you out of the hospital, you'll be safer a home. Take it easy and come by the hub before the end of the week and I'll take another look at you."

"Thanks Owen," she mumbled before drifting off. Owen collected his gear and exited the room where Jack was flirting with Dr. Black and very successfully distracting her from all thoughts of her odd patient. Owen gave him an annoyed glanced and he finished the conversation and left with him.

"So what did you think? Does it seem like it's related to the other deaths and injuries" Jack asked him.

"I don't think so, she's a bit older than the average victim, and despite her being in a hospital there haven't been any more accidents like with the last kid. It sounds like she was just being clumsy."

"Do you think we should we mention it to her?"

"Nah, it'll just worry her over nothing."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Three days later Kate wandered into the Hub looking rather dazed and slightly scuffed. The sling was gone, but now her right hand was wrapped in a white bandaging, while her left one had a large butterfly band-aid across the palm, and she appeared to have a bruise on her forehead. Gwen noticed first. "What happened to you, love?"

She shrugged, "I don't know. My luck has just seemed rather off lately. There were the stairs three days ago and now I almost got run over walking here."

Jack looked up from his desk. "Like someone was trying run you over, or you just didn't look before you crossed the street?"

"The latter, I think. I was waiting at a cross walk for the light to change. I stepped out into the street right when the walk sign flashed. A van driver must not have seen me because he was already turning the corner. I would have gotten hit if a woman in the crowd hadn't grabbed my coat and yanked me back."

"But you don't think the driver was trying to hit you?"

"Er, no. He slammed on his brakes when he saw me. He stopped and apologized, seemed very upset."

Jack stood up slowly. "And the hand?"

Kate looked at her hand as if she had forgotten it. "Oh that, that was just me being stupid. Last night I tried to pick up the kettle without a tea cozy."

"What about the other one?" Jack had started to pace.

"I was cutting an apple, knife in one hand apple in the other. The knife slipped."

"And your head? I thought the last injury should have healed by now"

"I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, tripped over my boots, and conked my head on the floor."

Jack and Owen exchanged a look. Kate caught it, but didn't understand what it meant. She watched them both uncertainly. Owen spoke first.

"I'd like to check you for a concussion."

Kate shrugged and stood still while Owen flashed the light in both eyes. "Well, no signs of concussion, I guess that thick skull of yours protected you. Come down to the autopsy bay, I want to run some more tests." With a shrug Kate complied, Jack followed on their heels, clearly unsettled.

Owen began to run several scans, which appeared to tell him nothing. Ianto wandered down the stairs with a tray of coffee and hot chocolate. Kate impulsively reached for the mug of chocolate, and took a swig. She yelped in pain as she burned her mouth and dropped the cup. Fragments of ceramic and hot chocolate splashed across the floor, startling Owen, sending him scrambling back cursing loudly.

"Kate, what the hell?" he snapped examining the stains on his coat. Kate ceased desperately fanning at her mouth. She looked confused.

"I'm sorry Owen. I don't know what I was doing."

Jack frowned and maneuvered his way around the sugary puddle. "You do remember that hot chocolate is hot, yes?"

Kate held her head shaking it slowly. "I know that. I don't know. The thought just didn't connect."

Ianto returned with a mop and a dustpan, and proceeded to clean up the small disaster. He addressed Owen as he worked. "Teenagers do go through periods of forgetfulness, impaired judgment, and clumsiness as their brains establish new connections right?"

"Yea, but not this dramatic." Owen had taken refuge sitting on the counter, he had already accepted that whatever had killed the children was trying to kill Kate.

Ianto swept the shards into the dustpan and dumped them into the waste bin. "Maybe it's more pronounced with Time Lords."

Jack nodded ready to jump on any explanation that did not involve a malice force they had no idea how to fight hunting his young friend, "Their brains are a lot more advanced than ours, especially in the psychic centers. Maybe Kate's basic functions are being affected as her brain enters a new stage of growth." He didn't fully believe it even as he said it though.

"Hard to believe Time Lords managed to survive as a species though, if they all got this hapless for a while when they hit thirteen" snapped Owen.

Kate glared at them all. "Guys you're making me sound like a lab experiment."

"Sorry," apologized Ianto, finishing with the mop.

Owen hopped down from the counter, now that the floor was clear again, glaring at Jack briefly. "Well this should be easily sorted. "I'll run a brain scan. It should only take a moment." He ran a familiar, gameboy looking device around Kate head a few times and then frowned at the screen.

"I don't see any changes at all. All your neural activity is within your normal limits." He paused and looked the screen more closely, "the part I think is your psychic center seems more active though."

"What like I'm sending out a signal again?"

"No it's in a different region of your psychic center than when you were in heat. It's like your listening to something."

"I don't hear anything."

"You wouldn't with your conscious mind."

Jack frowned and crossed his arms. Time to face reality "So does this mean there is some sort of psychic entity running around trying to make Kate hurt herself? Possibly the creature you and Tosh saw in the Hospital."

"Looks like it."

"What monster? What Hospital, Does this have something to do with the dead kids on the news?" Kate demanded.

"Kate I'll explain later come with me upstairs I think I might have a hunch about what is going on and it is not good. Ianto remember those mirrors we dredged out of the harbor last year?"

Ianto nodded slowly. "The ones you said were creepy and should be locked away in the vaults forever."

"Bring them up to the main Hub. Owen, help him and be careful, if you break one of these, seven years bad luck isn't just a superstition."

A half-hour later four Victorian-looking, stand-alone floor length mirrors were arranged in the main room of the Hub. They seemed perfectly ordinary to Kate, but she had long ago learned to distrust anything ordinary-seeming if Torchwood was involved with it.

Jack finished adjusting several lights around the mirrors. "Alright. I think this should work. Kate I want you to stand in the middle of the mirrors. Ianto, you're in charge of the lights, Tosh, monitor any unusual energy spikes. Gwen, if Kate gets scared it's your job to calm her down. Owen, er, well keep out of the way, and if you panic, don't shoot anything."

Owen gave Jack a dirty look, but set up residence sitting on one of the desks out of harm's way. Kate walked to the center of the mirrors, glancing around nervously like a deer in the headlights. "I'm not going to get scared, Jack."

Jack just gave her a half-hearted reassuring smile and flicked the light switch. The lights hit the mirrors and bounced back, illuminating the circle. Kate was not by nature a screamer, but we all have our less dignified moments.

How else can one respond to discovering they have had an invisible, and highly disturbing stalker? The creature crouched just inside the ring of light looking a lot like a spider monkey, by a charcoal grey color, and with a gaping black, ragged hole instead of a lower half of the face. Its eyes, shadowed by heavy brows, covered the red flames that burned within. It was not too big, and yet that made it all the more unsettling.

It hissed as the light hit it and scrambled back on its four legs like a spider. It vanished the moment it stepped outside the circle of light. A bullet struck the floor where it had just been, and ricocheted into a trash can, missing Owen's leg by an inch and making everyone jump.

Owen squawked and dived behind his desk. After a moment he looked over the edge and glared at Ianto, who was shaking slightly and lowering his gun.

"Sorry, sorry everyone, I don't know what came over me. I saw the creature and I had to kill it." He was looking at the weapon in his hand as if he wasn't completely sure how it had gotten there. Jack subtly slipped it from his hand and pocketed it.

"Jack what was that?" called Kate. She was sitting cross-legged in the center of the light, glancing about worriedly. Gwen had a reassuring hand on her shoulder, but she didn't seem to notice.

"I've run across this kind of creature before, I just had to be sure. What's hunting you is chronovore of some variety. What these creatures do is use subtle psychic hints to get people to make foolish, life-ending decisions, though only fairly reasonable

ones--they can't make a perfectly happy person commit suicide--then it eats up the potential years they would have had."

"Like the file we have on the 'Weeping Angels?'" asked Tosh.

"Yes, but more deadly, and even more so for Kate. Her time-sensitivity, and the ability of Time Lords to reach out to alternate threads of time and existence, probably also attract the creature."

Ianto, nodded slowly, "because there's so much chronopotential energy, all in one place."

"Exactly."

"So aside from establishing that I can scream like a little girl, and am appetizing to spider monkeys as well as weevils, what have we achieved?"

"Well we gave Ianto another chance to shoot at me," suggested Owen, who had ventured out from behind the desk now that the gun was gone.

Kate gave him a sharp look, and returned her attention to Jack, "I meant, do we know how to fight this thing?"

"Not really."

"Well what happened last time you ran across one of these things?" asked Tosh.

Jack flicked off the lamps that were illuminating the circle and slumped in a chair. "It was during the First World War. One of them started to prey on my unit, we were in the trenches, so at first it didn't seem strange that a few men a day were dying from bad decisions. It's easy to get your head blown off, from just looking over the wall at the wrong time during a war.

"The creature was too methodical though, working it's way from one trench to the next, completely eliminating units one man at a time. The soldiers noticed, thought it was a curse. No one ever saw the creature directly, but soldiers started to have dreams. One night they would wake up screaming about a horrible spider monkey, and the next day they would be a second too slow and get shot."

"How did you stop it?"

"I didn't. A week later Germans bombed my section of the trenches. Killed everyone, except me, who couldn't die. I think the creature probably moved to the enemy trenches were there was still food for it."

"Well we have a way to see it this time. Maybe we can set some sort of trap and shoot it," suggested Gwen.

"We'd be more likely to hit each other," warned Owen. "Besides, are we sure this thing is even affected by bullets?"

"Probably not. We need to approach this in a different way. This creature's greatest power is the ability to make people take stupid risks and get themselves killed. We specialize in stupid risks. We could easily end up expending as much of our energy saving each other from dumb mistakes rather than actually kill this thing."

Kate slumped dejectedly. "So are you just going to let my life get eaten by an evil monkey?"

Jack shook his head. "Of course not. I'm not giving up. I just need to think."

"And while you're doing that, Kate might wander into traffic," pointed out Owen.

"Kate, maybe you should stay in the Hub. If you were in one of the cells, there would be no risk of you hurting yourself," suggested Gwen.

"I hate the vault. It's dark, and cold, and full of weevils."

"We wouldn't put you in the same section with the weevils.

"Fine. I'll call my mom to bring me an overnight bag until we sort this out."

Janice was understandably not happy with the situation. Even though Kate swore to her that Torchwood was only trying to help, she wasn't fully convinced. It didn't help that she had this conversation in the vaults, while her daughter was sitting in one of the cells.

After she managed to trip on the stairs, and nearly conk her head again, Jack had decided it would be best to get Kate out of harm's way as quickly as possible. The chronovore seemed to be stepping up its efforts.

"If you think I'm just going to let you imprison my daughter indefinitely, you have another thing coming!"

"Well technically it's not indefinitely, just until we find a way to deal with the chronovore," said Gwen.

"And she won't be a prisoner," added Jack. "She's here for her own protection."

"Same difference, I don't like it."

"Well tough, it's the only way we can keep your kid safe from the evil life-stealing monkey."

Jack shot Owen a warning look. "We are not going to refer to the chronovore as 'the evil life-stealing monkey'."

Janice stamped her foot to get their attention back, "I'm not convinced of this thing until I see it. I'm staying here until you release Kate. I don't want you spiriting her off to some secret base when I turn my back."

"She's already in a secret base, where do you think we would take her?" asked Jack tiredly. He was really considering enforcing the largely ignored "no civilians in the Hub" rule. However, separating Janice from her daughter was certain to make her more upset, and he didn't want to deal with that. "Stay down here and keep Kate company if you want. Ianto can find you a cot and set it up in the hallway. Just keep out of the way."

An evening spent looking through files, and history turned up nothing. While Tosh could find records of other chronovore hauntings in the past, they always ended with the victim's death. Even when the person was put in isolation the creature haunted their dreams, until the victim became sleep deprived and exhausted. They usually lost all interest in food and eventually withered away within a week. The few times it was recorded in material form, all weapons proved useless against it.

The next morning when Ianto carried down a tray of breakfast neither Kate nor her mother looked well. "She woke up yelling every hour or so," Janice explained. She looked more frightened now, as she finally accepted what Torchwood had told her. Ianto noticed with a rising sense of worry that Kate only picked at her breakfast. Even with nothing dangerous on the plate she managed to drop it on her foot. Kate cursed angrily and retreated to her bunk, hating the world in general.

He passed Gwen on the stairs as she headed down to talk to Kate's mom. For all of Ianto's tact he did not have the raw people skills that Gwen did. Ianto reported his findings to Jack when he went back to the main room of the hub. "Damn, things are already happening faster than they do in the records. The chronovore must really want Kate."

"So we have established. What's the plan?" Ianto always expected there to be a plan.

"Remember a few months ago when we found an empty prisoner transport device, similar to the one Mary arrived in?" Tosh buried her face in a file at the mention of Mary.

"I thought the test with the rat established that its passenger compartment was damaged and squished anything put in it," commented Owen, glancing up from his desk, where he was wearily perusing files.

"I don't mean to put Kate in it. I want to trap the chronovore in it and send it into the Vortex via the Rift. Because the transport is damaged it should break up in the Vortex should kill the chronovore, it kills anything exposed to it even most energy beings. We just have to draw it out long enough to trap it."

"Very good, sir. So how do you propose we bell the cat?" asked Ianto.

"Tosh?" Jack nodded at her, and she instantly began tapping at her workstation.

"Right, so, when Jack told me about how and when Kate's father came to Cardiff I checked back over the log of Rift activity from that time. There are some weird records from that time which my predecessor never figured out.

"What Rogadeit described as falling through space and time, actually meant he fell through the Vortex and then got caught up in the Rift and thrown out in Cardiff, like a marble falling through a hole in a pocket. There was a considerable spike when his TARDIS fell through the rift. From Janice's description I think I've figured out where. There was a second considerably bigger spike of a different sort of energy about ten minutes later.

"This was probably when Rogadeit died and regenerated. The energy from that created a sort of knot in space-time because it was so close to a hole in the Rift. There had been a continuous loop of small energy spikes there ever since. It's been something of absolutely no consequence until now."

"English, Tosh, plain English, I know you speak it," complained Owen. Tosh rolled her eyes and continued.

"What this all means is that there is a knot of energy trapped in the Rift and I can manipulate the Rift just enough to undo the knot and free the energy. The creature will instantly be drawn to feed and then we catch it in the transport and send it off."

"So what's the catch?" Gwen was leaning on the stairwell that went down to the vaults, listening.

Jack raised an eyebrow. "How do you know there's a catch?"

"You're looking dramatic, Jack. You look like you're standing on a desolate roof top even in the middle of the Hub."

Jack crossed his arms. "We know the chronovore is following Kate. We need to take her to the energy knot so it will go there as well."

Gwen's expression sharpened. "Which means we'll be taking her from the safety of the Hub across town, possibly in a car, exposing her to countless things that might allow the chronovore to kill her before we get there. We can't put her at risk like that--there's got to be another way."

"There isn't."

"Her mum will never let us."

"She doesn't have any say in this. We need to deal with this creature and we need to do it now, it's killed to many already."

"And if Kate gets killed in the process? God Jack! This is Kate we're talking about. Our Kate, the girl you saved from Weevils, the girl who's been hanging about the Hub for a month. You can't use her as bait." She strode across the room facing Jack directly. The rest of the team remained silent, letting the argument play out.

"Do you think I don't know that? Do you think I'd have concocted such a desperate plan if I weren't desperate to save her? If we delay any longer she will die anyway--at least this way she has a chance."

Gwen looked ready to say more, but then thought better of it. She slumped slightly. "Alright Jack, I'll trust your judgment in this."

Jack laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder and squeezed it gently. "Thank you."

Kate's mother was predictably not happy about the plan, but she agreed because she was scared by the way she could see her daughter already weakening. Kate agreed because she trusted Jack and he had never failed her before.

Driving with Kate was deemed too dangerous, so Owen went ahead with the SUV and equipment to set up. Tosh stayed in the Hub to begin preparing the Rift. Jack, Gwen and Ianto would walk Kate across the city as quickly as possible. Tosh hacked the traffic lights, so that there would be no active traffic flow on any of the streets they needed to cross.

Jack told Janice to stay in the Hub, but she refused and short of locking her in the vault there was no way to keep her from coming along. Not that Torchwood had ever had any problem with temporarily detaining civilians, but Jack wanted to remain on good terms with Kate's mother. If they all lived Torchwood would inevitably have more dealings with Kate, and having her mother hate them would not be good.

They set out from the Hub at quick clip. Jack walked first, looking about for trouble. Kate's mother had her by the arm to keep her from stumbling, and Gwen was on her other side. Ianto followed close behind.

They crossed the square without incident, but as soon as they got to the streets of the city things began to go wrong. As they walked along the sidewalk the awning of a shop began to creak loose. Jack yelled for them all to run, and they did. Ianto scrambled out of the way before the metal rods that held up the old canopy came crashing to the ground.

They picked up their paces to a half run and hurried on. A snarling dog, a large mutt of some sort, faced them at the end of the street. Jack withdrew an electric tazer from his coat and when it lunged he caught it expertly in the stomach. The animal fell jerking and unconscious to the ground with a heavy thud.

"Jack there's two more behind us."

"Three to the right."

"Two to the left, although one of them is a toy poodle." A chihuahua latched onto Kate's leg and she sent it flying with a kick. All the dogs of Cardiff had turned feral and were after them. There was nothing to do but run. From within their pockets Gwen and Ianto produced more tazers, Ianto giving Janice an extra one. She wielded it with surprising brutality as a Dalmatian lunged at her from the side. The baying and snarls persued them even as they began to outpace their remaining, shorter-legged pursuers.

Their haste made them careless and they were all nearly taken out by a careening delivery truck that burst through an intersection ahead of them, its ruined brakes making a horrible screeching sound. Jack slammed to a stop in time to have every one crash into him. He hit the pavement unglamorously thrown by Kate's light weight and surprising momentum. She at least managed to keep her footing and not go down with him.

Jack scrambled to his feet, eyes going wide as he watched the truck crash into a nearby storefront. Behind them Ianto was fending off the growing pack of snarling dogs with his tazer. "Keep moving!" he snapped.

Jack and Ianto exchanged a look and the rest of them hurried on as Ianto stayed to keep back the beasts. They bolted through the crowded shopping district, Jack yelling "Police, make way!" (It worked better to yell police, since people stopped and gawked more if he yelled Torchwood)

At then end of the shopping district Jack stepped ankle deep into a large pool of water. The electric shock from a nearby downed power line stopped his heart and sent him tumbling down. He barely managed to roll away from the puddle and yell, "Keep running!" before death took him.

Clawing back through the darkness into life was as horrible as it always was. Of all the ways and places to come back, though, there had been worse than a street of Cardiff, covered in filthy water, with Ianto wiping the water from his face with a handkerchief. He sprang to his feet unsteadily and together they ran to catch up.

They didn't rejoin Kate, Janice and Gwen until they reached the outskirts of the city. The wind was picking up, and a cold mix of sleet and rain pelted down, making the road slick. Kate kept slipping even with Gwen on one side and her mother on the other, steadying her.

When Gwen lost her balance all three of them went down, Gwen twisting her ankle in the process. She shivered with pain when she tried to stand on it. "Go, I'll be alright." She told them. With worried expressions they did. They crossed an empty cow pasture, now a mess of mud, climbed a hill, and at last arrived at the place of Rodageit's death and rebirth.

It was a rather dull looking hilltop, distinguished only by the stretch of dead ground where the TARDIS had fallen and nothing had grown since. Owen was already there, the mirrors set up, and the lights arranged and drawing power from the mini generator in the SUV. He had the transport device in his hand.

As soon as he saw them he yelled into his communicator. "Tosh, activate the Rift, undo the knot."

For a moment there was nothing as they all stumbled breathlessly to the top of the hill to gather around Owen. Then there was a sharp crack of lightening from the sky that split the earth at the center to the mirrors. The lightning grew and crackled into a pillar of light, and then shrunk into a jagged blue slash in the air, about as high as a tree. Janice began to shake and her eyes stream with tears. Clinging to her daughter, she whispered, "Rogadeit. I…I can sense him again. It's so faint, but it feels like a faded echo of him."

Owen hit the lights. The mirrors illuminated the circle around the lightning. They saw the chronovore crawling into the circle towards the life energy. It raised its little claw like hands and began to draw the lightning into itself, its jagged dark mouth drinking it up like a drug.

Jack took the transport form Owen and crept to the edge of the circle. He hit a few buttons on it and then threw it in. There was another flash of light, this time red and a swirling whirlwind sucked the monster into the jagged metal device. The lightning bolt faded away as quickly as it manifested. The transport shook and wobbled for a moment. It began to flash and fade as it prepared to go. Then the glow changed to a sickly green and it exploded, sending fragments of metal everywhere. They dove behind the SUV in time to avoid the worst of the shrapnel. Jack peered from behind the SUV and saw the creature stalking from the remains.

If it was possible for something so small to appear so very furious and terrifying, it did. The storm grew worse and hail began to pound on them.

Sharper winds buffeted Kate, tossing her about. The creature began to crawl towards the edge of the mirror circle. From one of his endless pockets Jack drew his last hope. He hit a button, gauged the distance and threw it carefully. The small portable prison cell they had once used to hold the sex gas monster. The Chronovore was instantly trapped in the shimmering circles. It raged with a cry like nails on a chalkboard.

Jack grabbed Kate's hand and they ran. "It won't hold. We have to get you to the TARDIS."

Janice watched them go, but did not follow. Instead she walked towards the failing force field, her eyes burning with the cold fury of a lioness. She held the useless tazer like a dagger.

"Get back, the field's about to shatter!" Owen yelled at her but she didn't hear. When the field exploded in a shower of sparks and the wailing monster fell to the ground, she was waiting. She struck out in calculated fury.

Her hand passed through the Chronovore, as if it was a wisp of smoke, and she stumbled forward on the momentum of her own strike. The creature chattered at her like a demonic squirrel and then sprang from the circle, vanishing from sight.

Janice screamed after it. "Come back you bastard! Fight me! Kill me instead! Leave my child alone!"

But it was gone, as if it had never been. Even the cold sleet had stopped, replaced by the natural warm rain of summer.

Jack and Kate ran, ran like rabbits from the wolf, mice from the cat. Hail struck them, wind assailed them. Jack yelled over the clamor to be heard. "I'll distract it long enough for you to get in the TARDIS. Once you're in you've got to jam in any coordinates and go."

"But I don't know how to pilot it, I won't be able to get home."

"It doesn't matter, just run, run for your life! The chronovore will latch onto the outside and be dragged into the Vortex. The Vortex will kill it. It's your only chance."

They could see the garden ahead of them through the pelting ice. At the edge of the garden Jack drew his gun, placed it against his own temple and pulled the trigger. In all his many years of existence, it was the first time Jack had ever taken his own life. The energy of his death drew the chronovore from Kate just long enough for her to stumble the last few feet to the TARDIS door.

She flung it open, tumbled in and slammed it behind her. She ran to the console, Hit a few coordinates and jammed the go button. There was a whooping and a flash and then she was tumbling into the Vortex.

When Jack was dragged back to the world of the living it was to the feeling of the sun's warmth against his face, and mud beneath his head. He sat up slowly. The garden was empty, save the flattened square where the TARDIS had once been. Both chronovore and Time Lady were gone. Where to, no one knew.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The TARDIS didn't come back. Not the next day, nor the next, nor even the one after that. On the third day Jack had to finally admit to himself that Kate didn't know how to get home. There was no way of telling where she had ended up, or to contact her. She was lost to them; probably drifting in space somewhere in a damaged time machine she didn't even know how to control.

He tried to console himself that at least she was alive and probably safe. That was more than he had done for Grey. The ancient evil they had faced had been beyond Torchwood's ability to fight. All they could do was send her away from the monster's claws.

This was even less consolation for Janice than it was for Jack or the rest of Torchwood. It was a bitter thing to lose first her husband, and now her child, to forces beyond her control.

She kept herself together. No tears, not bitter raging against the universe. She ate, she slept, she bathed, she even spoke when spoken to, but she did little else. There was something empty in her eyes. Jack had seen that look before. He knew where it led.

Despite her protests he made sure she was never on her own. A member of Torchwood always sat vigil with her on rotation. They each offered their own sort of comfort, most of which she rejected. She paid no mind to Gwen's overly sweet kindness, Tosh's awkward sympathy, or Owen's brash cynicism. She did however accept Ianto's coffee, and Jack's companionable silence.

Jack was dozing on her couch late on the fourth night when she woke him up with a gentle shake. He blinked his sleepy eyes awake. Janice was in her nightgown, a slight garment made of loose black silk. She was draped partly by an open blue bathrobe. Her hair was a mane of swirling chaos, tangled from restless slumber. Her eyes shone in the moonlight.

He really hoped this wasn't a late night grief-induced come on. He was all for the healing power of sex, but their relationship was strained enough as it was, and that could only complicate it for the worse. One thing he had learned through more than one bad experience was that it was not a good idea to sleep with a woman who secretly blamed you for something. In this case losing her daughter.

Fortunately Ms. Caylan did not have amorous intentions. Once she saw that Jack was awake she sat back on her heels. "I had a dream."

Jack sat up pushing off his greatcoat, which he had been using as a blanket. "A bad one?"

"I'm not sure."

"Then I think we need tea." Jack stood and stretched awkwardly, trying to get the kink out of his back. The sofa was old, and had a dip in it. He led the way through to dark and silent house to the kitchen, where he flipped the kettle on without turning on the light. That would have been to jarring against the peaceful summer night.

Janice sat in one of the mismatched wooden chair and pulled her robe tightly around herself.

The kettle clicked and Jack poured the hot water into the teapot. Her brought it and the cups over to the table.

"So what did you dream?"

"I saw Kate. At least I think it was her. It was all a little out of focus, like I was watching a television with bad reception. Somehow I knew it was her though, it felt like her. She was in some kind of city. It's hard to describe, it was a place of spires, and smoke, and lights. She was walking alone on the street. I think it was cold because she had a coat wrapped tightly around her. I think she was looking for something. I don't know what though, that was when I woke up."

"Do you think it was some kind of message from her?" Jack filled her teacup. She took it and cradled it in her hands like a flame.

"I…I don't know. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, wanting to know she's alive and well. It felt so real though, I could hear the sound of her steps, that squeaky echo of rubber against cobblestone. She was still wearing those rubbish rain boots she liked so much."

Jack fiddled with the cup in his hand, sloshing it and hardly noticing the burn of the warm liquid against his skin. He could feel how much Janice needed to believe in her dream, and he had no right to tell her otherwise. Hell, for all he knew Kate was sending her mother psychic communications across time and space. She was a resourceful girl.

"Well it sounds like she's doing all right for herself if she's got a coat and boots."

"Is that the old soldier in you talking? Putting all your stock in staying warm and dry?"

Jack paused, "How do you know I've ever been a soldier?"

"The coat's a bit of a tip off."

"It's a World War two coat."

"I was married to a time traveler, remember. I can tell when someone is out of place."

Jack sipped thoughtfully, "I suppose you would."

"You don't recognize the city I described, do you?"

Jack drained his cup and set it down. He dug through his memory, but nowhere in it was a city of cobblestones and spires. "I'm afraid not. If you have more dreams though, write them down and I'll take a look."

Janice took his hand and held it in hers for a moment, looking earnestly into Jack's sky blue eyes with her own murky green. "Thank you."

She released him and stood, walking wearily back to her bedroom. Jack watched her go and then leaned his chair back against the kitchen counter, putting his bare feet up on the table. Forlorn hope skirted about his subconscious, a candle in a distant window. Sleep did not come to him that night.

The dreams continued almost every night. Janice dreamed her daughter reading in a field of blue swirl-shaped plants and green flowers. She dreamed Kate swimming in the water of orange waves, surrounded by silver fish with wavy, wing-like fins. She saw her running and laughing with a creature that looked like a blue fox with porcupine spines, and the voice of a songbird.

She saw her in a great library searching through tome after tome of history, seeking any mention of Time Lords, time travel, or Earth. She saw her crying in the TARDIS curled up in the bed that was once her father's.

She saw her hiding terribly frightened and hiding in the cargo hold of a transport ship from pirates. She saw her running from some sort of shadow monster in the ruins of a once great city. She saw her helping to tend the wounded on the battlefield of some great and distant war.

Always though, in joy and sorrow, she saw that she was alone. Janice told Jack of all her dreams, in as much detail as she could, but her could never recognize anything. Perhaps Kate was too far away in space, or to far in the future, for Jacks knowledge to stretch to where she was, or perhaps it all truly just a mother's dreams.

After that first night, Jack didn't keep Janice under constant observation anymore. He knew she had come to some sort of peace within herself. She began to write again. As she told Jack, "My daughter's gone, but my deadlines aren't going anywhere. I might as well keep earning a living."

Jack had read some of Janice's books in order to make sure she didn't disclose anything about the greater universe she had learned from her husband. She didn't, not exactly. There were shadows, or distorted images of real places and species, but things were twisted enough through he lens of fiction for nothing to be completely recognizable.

For the sort of serial science fiction paperback Janice wrote, her work was unusually good. Not exactly Tolkein level, but fantastical enough to incite dreams and true enough to the human heart to touch at something deep. Her characters were brave and cowardly in their own turns. They faced down their challenges with human fear in their hearts, but an equal share of courage. There was humor in dark moments, and shadows in the joy. Jack found himself reading more of her books when he found the time.

Life moved on in the hub. A bit more quiet and sad, but it moved on. The Torchwood team was used to loss. The fact that this time didn't involve a clear death made it all the easier to get back to saving the world.

Kate had been gone a week when Stephanie wandered into the tourist office. It was late in the afternoon, nearly six o'clock. She walked in with the sort of dazed expression someone struggling to retrieve memories through the fog of retcon. She glanced about the office, picking up a city guide and setting it down again.

"Can I help you?" Ianto asked from behind the desk. She narrowed her eyes and looking at him thoughtfully.

"Do I know you?"

Ianto fought to keep his face blank. "No." What lie had the girl been told about Kate's disappearance? Did she believe it? Probably not if she was here looking for Kate.

She tilted her head to the side. "Oh, I'm sorry. You just look very familiar." She gazed past him to the door that led to the rest of the hub blinking uncertainly. Looking at her closer now Ianto could see that her eyes were puffy from recently shed tears. Her face was shadowed as if sleep had been evading her. Her dark hair hung lank and untended about her shoulders. She was the very image of young heartbreak.

As if sleepwalking she moved towards the door. Ianto sprang to his feet and blocked her way. "You can't go back there, miss."

Something finally clicked behind her dark eyes. She froze in her step. "Oh god, I do know you. Your name is Ianto."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

She pointed accusingly at him, "No, I remember now. You and Jack brought Kate and me here after the weevil attack. I do know this place. It's the hub." Her eyes went wide, "What did you do to me to make me forget? What have you done to Kate?"

Normally a thirteen-year-old girl can't shove a grown man out of her way. But Ianto was stunned and it didn't take much to push him off balance. Stephanie bolted past him through the wooden door.

The heavy cog door rolled back automatically, and she was in. Jack just had to time to manage an undignified "What?" before the angry girl crashed into him kicking and clawing.

"Where is she? Did you kill her, you bastard!" Jack managed to get a grip on her shoulders and lift her off her feet, holding the angry girl at arms length. She struggled and cursed, but couldn't get at him. Jack nearly dropped her as he recognized her.

"Stephanie?"

Ianto dashed into the hub. "I'm sorry sir she managed to get by me. I think she broke through the retcon."

Jack looked at Ianto and the angry girl in his arms. She glared back at him. "Put me down."

"If you calm down and stop trying to hit me, I will." She stop struggling and he set her back on her feet, taking a quick step back in case she decided to take another swing at him. She didn't.

"Where is Kate?"

"Gone, far away."

"How?"

"There was a creature that came out of the rift. It was hunting her and we couldn't stop it. The only thing she could do was run. She had a time machine left by her father. She was able to leave in it, but we don't think she knows how to pilot it. The monster is gone, but we don't have any way to bring her back"

Stephanie watched him carefully. After a moment her shoulders slumped. "You're telling the truth, aren't you. She's gone forever."

"I'm afraid so."

Silent tears began to pour from her eyes. Jack caught her as she began to slump to the ground. She sobbed earnestly then, hard painful undignified sobs. She buried her face in Jack's coat, soaking the wool with tears and snot. Jack stroked her unwashed hair, so much emotion for one so young. She was just old enough to get her heart broken, but not old enough to know how to handle grief. At last the tears ran out and she just clung to the damp fabric.

"You really loved her didn't you?"

"Yes," her voice was hoarse.

"There's a pill I could give you that would make you forget her."

"No."

"You wouldn't hurt anymore."

"I said no!" Stephanie released her death grip on the lapels and glared up with red-rimmed eyes. "How can you even suggest that? Haven't you ever been in love?"

"More times than you would believe, kid."

"You won't force me to forget will you?"

Jack shook his head slowly. "Not as long as you keep all of this a secret." He caught her gaze with deadly seriousness. "Listen. You have to promise not to tell anyone about this place or who Kate really was. If you do, I'll have to wipe your memory again, and make you forget Kate completely."

"I promise." Stephanie straitened up wiping her eyes. "Is it alright if I go home now?"

"Go ahead, do you think you can get back on your own? I could have Gwen drive you if you want."

"No, I'm fine." Stephanie turned and left as quickly as she had come.

With a weary sigh, Jack leaned against the railing, looking down into the empty hub. After a moment he sensed Ianto at his side.

"Do you really think that was wise, sir?"

"Not really, but I don't have the heart to retcon her again. Kate will never forgive us if she comes home and Stephanie doesn't remember her at all."

"Do you really think she'll come back, sir?"

"We have to hope. We owe her that much."

...

Authors Note: The reviewer Kaiyt asked what the Kate's Tardis looks like so I thought I would elaborate for her. Kate's Tardis tends looks like a garden shed. It can take other forms but that's it's default in most situations, especially while on earth. From the outside it appears to be made of to be made of wood with a slanted roof and one door that dominates the front of it. There are no windows. It's about five feet by five feet on all sides.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

It was a quiet, late morning in September. Jack was paying Janice his weekly visit, supposedly to hear about her latest dreams, but really to check in on her to make sure she was all right.

They were sitting outside enjoying the last few warm days before fall set in properly, and drinking the bitter black tea Janice was so fond of.

The wheezing sound of the TARDIS cut through the morning quiet. With a flash of light, a shed materialized on the other end of the garden. Janice and Jack stared at the shed, stared at each other, and leapt to their feet simultaneously.

Being the faster runner, Jack got there first, just as Kate was poking her head out of the TARDIS. He swept her up into his arms, twirling her around as they both laughed with joy. When Kate was more than a bit dizzy he finally set he set her down, planting a solid kiss of her forehead.

Before she could regain her balance Janice embraced her, and for nearly a minute mother and daughter clung to each other, silent tears streaming down both their faces.

"Oh my little girl, I thought I would never see you again."

"I'm home, Mom. After all these years I'm finally home."

Janice tensed and stepped back form her daughter. "Years? Kate, love, you've only been gone three months."

Her eyes widened as she took in the young woman standing before her. The Kate who had left was hardly thirteen; this one was at least twenty. She would never have her mother's easy beauty, but the intelligence in her expression more than made up for any plainness of looks. She had grown taller, not as tall as her mother, but at least a good five foot four inches. She had filled out properly, still lean, but there were curves now where a woman was supposed to have curves. She wore he hair longer held back in a foxtail bob, no longer the flowing mane of her childhood, nor the short curls of her preteen years. Her face was the most changed; it had grown thinner, her nose sharper, her freckles gone. A thin white scar from some long ago injury cut across her neck. Her eyes were steadier, and even a bit sadder.

She wore a heavy coat that rather resembled a female version of Jack's, if a bit more form fitting. Her shirt was an uncomplicated white tank top, her pants simple brown cargo, with countless pockets. Her boots were heavy, knee length black leather, well scuffed. Not something her thirteen-year-old self would have ever worn.

The nervous fidgeting of her earlier years was gone, a calm intensity replacing it.

"How long?" Janice asked weakly.

"Eight years."

Janice let out a slow breath. "We've lost so much."

"I'm sorry Mom. I tried so hard to find my way back. It just never worked until today. Please believe me--I'm still Kate, just a bit older."

Janice hugged her daughter again, "I know love, it's all just a bit of a shock. I'm sure I'll get used to it."

"You're crying again."

"It's just the thought of you all on your own for so long. My poor little girl."

"I was on my own for a long time. But not for all of it. I met people along the way, and two years ago I finally found someone who would travel with me."

As if on cue, a petite pony-tailed blond girl, glanced out from behind the TARDIS door.

"Is this really earth?"

"Yeah Jenny, it finally is. I even got the time period right this time, no dinosaurs."

Jack stared at the girl flabbergasted. She smelled like the Doctor. Not like a relative of the Doctor's but exactly like him, except female.

"Doctor? Did you regenerate as a girl?"

The girl brightened up, giving him a dazzling smile that made his heart skip a beat. "No, he's my Dad. Do you know him?"

"I used to travel with him. Er…wait, how do you even exist? You can't be his daughter, you smell exactly like him. You are the Doctor."

Jenny rolled her big brown eyes. "I was made from extrapolating his DNA. It's a long story, trust me."

She strode past Jack to Janice, "Hello Ms. Caylan. I'm Jenny. I've been traveling with your daughter for the past year. Kate's told me a lot about you."

Janice could not seem to decide what to make of the chipper blond but accepted the offered hand and shook it.

"Did you help Kate get home?"

Jenny made a thoughtful expression. "Well she figured out the coordinates and how to fly the TARDIS, but I pushed some buttons for her. Does that count?"

Janice smiled, "it means your welcome in my home. Now I _really_ need a cup of tea. Why don't we all go back to the house? I think I have some biscuits in the cupboard."

A half hour later they were all settled around the living room, Kate and Jenny on the couch, Jack in one easy chair, Janice in the other. There was something about the way the girls sat together, shoulders touching that suggested to Jack that they were a bit more than traveling companions. He wondered if Janice noticed, but she seemed a bit too caught up with getting her daughter back to be thinking about anything else.

Kate accepted a cup of tea from her mother and sipped at the dark liquid with a degree of reverence.

"Earl grey doesn't exist anywhere else in the universe you know. There's a rough equivalent to almost every other human food out there, but not earl grey."

Jenny took a sip of hers and made a face, "no wonder, this stuff is bitter as peat." Kate deftly plucked several sugar cubes up off the tray and dropped them into Jenny's tea. There was clearly no concept of personal space between those two.

"Have it with sugar, that should help."

"hmm, that is better."

Jack cleared his throat. "Now that we're settled. Kate, what happened after you left? How did you finally manage to get home?"

Kate set down her cup. "I hardly know where to start. I guess the beginning is as good a place as any. When I initially ran I just jammed in random coordinates. I ended up on an uninhabited planet. I've never been able to figure out it's name, I think it might actually be undiscovered.

"It was rather like an earth forest, except with purple trees, at least in the part where I landed. There was enough fruit in the trees, that I didn't starve, which was good since I was stuck there six months.

"It took me a while to figure it out, but the journey had drained the TARDIS's fuel cells. I had been able to wake it up, but it was still healing and recharging. It wasn't ready for the journey I took it on.

"I spent my time studying the books on time travel in the TARDIS library trying to figure out how to get back to earth once the fuel cells regenerated. When there was enough power I tried jumping back to earth.

"That's when I figured out the navigational equipment was terribly damaged. I never did manage to fix it. I eventually had to give up and build a whole new set, but that was years in the future.

"After the second jump I found myself on a highly advanced planet inhabited by a humanoid species. It was a bit like New York if you could picture it a thousand years in the future, but more seedy and alien. I nearly starved my first week there. Eventually I figured out how to forge the local digital currency chip they used."

"You stole?" Janice looked mildly horrified.

Kate didn't meet her eyes. "I was hungry. It was the safest way to get money. It didn't hurt anyone."

"She survived. That's what matters," Jack reminded Janice. "She was thirteen year old girl from a different planet and time period. She couldn't exactly get a job."

"At least not the sort I would want to do," added Kate quietly. She had wrapped her arms around herself. Jenny put an arm around her reassuringly and Kate kept talking.

"I didn't like that city. As soon as the TARDIS regenerated enough for another jump after four months I went. I didn't care where I ended up as long as it wasn't dark and filled with the smell of smog and rot.

"I ended up on a nice planet that time, occupied by a race of blue fox like creatures, sentient if rather laid back. They were content to live in the forest, and never build cities. I made some good friends. I liked that planet. There were beautiful oceans too the loveliest pink color, with silver fish. I stayed there for a long time as I tried again to repair the TARDIS.

Eventually I realized that I needed more books and training than what I could find in the TARDIS. I managed to create a set of navigational equipment just good enough to get me to a nearby-industrialized planet. From there I traveled on a commercial transport to a library planet where I hope to learn more about time travel and Time Lords. I'd gotten good at forging currency by then, so money wasn't a problem."

Janice looked rather perplexed. "How did you fit the TARDIS on a transport, it's awfully bulky."

The half Time Lord grinned. "Oh that was the easy part. You see size is all rather relative with a TARDIS. I shrunk it down to the size of a trunk, with wheels on it in fact. It was easy to take with me then. I traveled the slow way when I could, less chance of ending up on the other side of the galaxy unintentionally."

"I learned what I could at the library, did more repairs, and tried another jump. Of course I failed. The next seven years were basically like that. I'd travel somewhere that I thought I could learn more about the TARDIS, study, make repairs, jump, and end up somewhere completely random. I'd find a way to live in the new place, probably get caught up with something that was going on, and then start the process of trying to get home all over again."

She slumped forward slightly, "Each time I tried to transport home I was so sure. I had so much hope, but every time I opened that door it was to an alien world."

"I'd actually given up when I met Jenny. She convinced me to keep trying. I guess she was right, because here I am. I can still hardly believe it."

Jack's phone chose this dramatic and meaningful moment to go off. "Jack we've got a herd of neon pink flying fish coming through the rift," blared Owen over the ear bud, so loud that everyone in the room could hear it.

Jack smiled apologetically and stood. "I've got to run. Sounds like my team needs their fearless leader."

"I'll come by the hub tomorrow. It'll be good to see everyone again."

"I'll give them all a heads up about your return and miraculous transformation into an adult. I'm sure Gwen will feel the need to acquire a cake or something."

Kate grinned, "I'd forgotten all about cake."

Jack returned her grin and the dashed out the door as Owen yelled over the headphones again demanding to know what was keeping Jack.

…

When Kate arrived at the hub with Jenny in tow each member of Torchwood greeted her in his or her own way; Gwen with warm hug and a peck on each cheek, Ianto with a rare smile, Tosh with a reassuring touch on the arm. Owen being his usual awkward self, tried to simply say hello, Kate laughed and pulled him in for a quick hug.

"I missed you two gecko boy."

"Good to see you're as annoying as ever, kid."

"I'm hardly a kid anymore."

"Not much taller though."

"Touché."

Ianto waved a pastry-stained knife at them. "If you're done with the sarcastic banter there is cake"

It was in fact a quiet nice chocolate cake, with "Welcome Home" written on it in pink frosting, obviously Gwen's doing. The team gathered around the couch to eat. Jenny poked at the cake uncertainly at first, but after one bite began to ravenously devour it.

"Have you never had cake before?" asked Jack in mild amusement offering her a third slice. Kate intercepted the plate, plucking it from his hands and putting it back on the table before Jenny could take it.

"No she hasn't. She's also got the self-control of a two year old; so don't give her any more. She'll make herself sick."

Jenny shot Kate a pouty look. "Hey I'm at least three years old earth time!"

Jenny's protest earned her some very odd looks from the entire Torchwood team and some coughs.

"And I'm now feeling like a pedophile for thinking she was cute," commented Owen dryly.

Tosh adjusted her glasses, "Jack explained to us you were the Doctor's daughter, via some sort of DNA extrapolation, but how can you be three years old? You look eighteen."

"Oh, that's easy. I was created as an adult, this size, able to speak, full knowledge of military protocols, how to fight, everything."

Kate put an affectionate arm around the blonds shoulder. "So she can brush her own teeth, or fight off a battalion, but she doesn't have much life experience yet. No comprehension of social norms or common sense for that matter. I guess they couldn't figure out a way to program those into a gene extrapolator."

"I understand social norms just fine." From the level expression the two girls were sharing this was clearly an old, and rather fun argument.

"Only when I explain them to you. Remember on Nocalian Five when you left the TARDIS in nothing but your knickers"

"It was hot."

"You scandalized the locals and nearly got us arrested."

"How was I supposed to know they'd object?"

"If you had any concept of modesty you would have."

"I'm still not convinced this modesty thing you talk about is real."

Jack held up his hand, "I'd agree with that point."

Ianto poked him in the ribs with his elbow. "You understand modesty sir, you just chose to ignore it."

"No arguing with that," laughed Gwen.

Tosh chose this moment to try and redirect the conversation towards a less potentially awkward direction. "So how did the two of you meet? I mean what are the chances of two of the only Time Lords in existence running across each other?"

"Surprisingly good actually." Kate's face had suddenly gone nearly as red as her hair. Jennt could not suppress her giggles. Kate rolled her eyes at her and continued. "Do you all remember when I hit puberty and almost got eaten by weevils because of the psychic signal I was sending out?"

There was a nod of heads around the room. "er well turns out another Time Lord can pick up that signal from as far away as half a galaxy and can follow it with impressive accuracy."

"Ah, and I get the impression the whole going into heat thing is a lot more dramatic is there's another Time Lord around" Jack asked.

"You could say that." Kate appeared to be sinking into her seat, half dead from embarrassment. Jenny just shook her head in amusement. Having a complete lack of modesty proved an effective protection against mortification.

Owen snorted, "nymphomaniac teenage Time Lord girls. Sounds like a porno." He did not manage to duck the pillow that was thrown by an indignant Kate, or the following swat by Gwen, and then additional pillow chucked by Tosh.

"What is a porno?" asked Jenny clearly perplexed.

"I'm sure we could find you an example on Owen's computer," joked Jack.

Gwen gave him a warning glare. "Something surprisingly boring, of which we are not going to speak any more of." Gwen's tone left no room for argument. The girls had been corrupted enough for one day as far as she was concerned. Jenny looked confused, but shrugged and let it slide. Life was full of mysteries


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

When Kate and Jenny left the Hub, Ianto saw them out. Jenny was having an interesting reaction to all the sugar she had consumed, hopping up and down, and generally twitching with restlessness.

Not surprisingly, she darted ahead once they exited the tourist office. Kate was about to dash after her when Ianto called for her to wait a moment. Kate paused outside the tourist office door.

"What is it, Ianto?"

"Have you spoken to Stephanie yet?"

"Who?" Kate's face showed no recognition.

Ianto frowned, "The girl who was with you the night of the weevil attack."

Kate blinked then smiled with recognition, "Oh yeah, I remember her. She and I were friends weren't we?"

"I think you two might have been a bit more than that. She showed up at the Hub about a week after you disappeared. She was upset enough to break through the retcon and remember the weevil attack. She was heartbroken over losing you. She accused us of kidnapping you before we told her the truth." Ianto had his arms crossed and a stern expression.

Kate shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. "I guess I should go tell her I'm alive then, huh."

"Yes, you should. She was--is in love with you. You owe her some kind of resolution."

Kate's shoulders slumped. "I must seem pretty insensitive, don't I?"

"A wee bit."

"You have to forgive me. For everyone here I've only been gone three months, for me it's been eight years. It's easy to half forget a childhood sweetheart in all that time." She let out a tired breath. "I mean, what do I even say?"

"I'm sure you can figure out something. After you speak to her you need to give her this." Ianto handed Kate a single white pill. "Once she's no longer connected to you its too great a risk for her to know about Torchwood."

"Won't she just break through the retcon again?"

"Not if her subconscious is at peace."

"Alright." Kate turned to go, then paused. "Stephanie must have made quite a scene for you to feel the need to call me out on this."

Ianto nodded his head almost imperceptibly. "She hit a nerve. I know what it's like to get left behind."

The next day she left Jenny with Gwen to discover the wonders of Earth shopping, and headed off on her own to find Stephanie. It was a weekend, so she figured Stephanie might be out and about. She wanted to talk to her on her own, without having to deal with her parents or find a way to explain to them about her sudden reappearance and increased age.

Yet Stephanie was not at the arcade, nor the café, nor the wharf, nor any old haunts that came to mind. She was about to give up and look up her number in the Cardiff phone book, when she remembered something.

It was a long walk out to Stephanie's house, but a familiar one. Stephanie's family, like her own, lived at the edge of the city, where the land had been cheap enough to build a house and have a bit of yard as well. She circumvented the rather ugly old house, and found the well worn trail that headed off into the bit of scrubby forest beyond.

The dirt path had been worn smooth by years of children's sneakers, Stephanie's and hers, running up and down it. It unnerved Kate to walk it again; it was like stepping into a dream. Memories lapped back to the surface like water from an underground spring.

She and Steph had been friends long before they had been anything else. They'd met in primary school, two intelligent, lonely little girls. Kate with a mother distracted by grief, and Stephanie with a father distracted by a new wife and baby. This place had been theirs, to hide, to dream. It had been here they'd had their first awkward kiss on a chill night in October so long ago.

The sound of the birds calling, the crunch of the dirt beneath her feet, the smell of the damp leaves, it brought her memories to vivid life. She reached the end of the trail. The tree fort was utterly unchanged. Well, hardly a fort really, just a bunch of boards nailed onto some solid looking branches, to create a good platform for sitting on. Stephanie was up there, reclining cross-legged playing a wooden flute very badly. Amidst the squeaks and lost notes, Kate thought she could make out something sorrowful.

Seeing Stephanie utterly unchanged was the strangest thing she had ever felt. Her body was still painfully skinny in the way of early adolescents; her features still soft with the naivety of youth. She still wore that damn Beatles t-shirt that was far too big for her. It had been easy to return to a mother and home unaltered by time; you never expect your mother to change; you don't want your home to change. But friends, they were supposed to change, to grow with you, not get left behind.

Kate had no idea what to say, so it was probably a good thing that Stephanie spoke first. She dropped the flute, and it rolled of the uneven platform to thump solidly onto the grass below. "Kate, Kate, is that really you?" Her voice trembled.

"Yeah, Steph. It's me."

The girl was across the meadow in a heartbeat. She nearly knocked Kate over with the force of her embrace. Her words poured out in a chaotic babble. "You're alive, you're alive. I knew you'd come back. I missed you so much. You're alive. Oh, you're alive!"

She paused for breath and released Kate. "Oh, you're old. What?"

"I'm not old."

"Well you're a grown up."

"Just barely, twenty one."

"Your still Kate though, right?"

"It's me."

"Tell me something only you would know. I have to be sure you're not a shape shifter or something."

"The night your mother left you stayed at my house, because you father needed to be alone. My mother made us hot chocolate with mint, and let us stay up all night. We watched old Godzilla movies until dawn. You finally fell asleep watching the one with Mothra."

Stephanie closed her eyes and took a slow breath. Then she smiled. "Come up to the fort. We can talk there." It was strange climbing an Earth tree again, to feel the solid scratchy bark under her hands, to smell the tweet tang of sap that clung to the wood. The platform was reassuringly solid under Kate's feet.

Stephanie watched her hopefully. "So what happened? Why did you leave, how did you get back?"

Kate leaned against the sun-warmed trunk of the tree and told her story, at least an abbreviated version of it. A proper summary of those eight years would have taken more than an afternoon. She left Jenny in the story, as it seemed only fair.

Stephanie listened intently, arms wrapped around her knees as if cold. When Kate finished she looked at her for a long time. "You're not really my Kate anymore, are you?"

"Not the girl who left, not really."

"I see parts of her in you, but you've changed a lot."

"Would it have been easier for you if I let you go on hoping?"

The dark haired girl shook her head slowly. "No, you did the right thing. I'm glad to know that you're alive and well. I don't have to grieve for my friend anymore. It just hurts to lose the girl I loved." Her eyes were leaking, but no sobs troubled her.

"I'm sorry," the words nearly stuck in her throat. Stephanie looked like she needed a hug, but the invisible divide between them was too great.

Kate took the white tablet from her pocket. "If you want you can forget me completely. It might even be for the best."

"Why does everyone think that forgetting is the best way to deal with heartbreak!" snapped Stephanie. "I'm sad, not dying. I'll get over it. Leave me my own damn history and emotions."

Kate put the retcon away. She wouldn't need it. "Alright. I understand. If Torchwood comes sniffing around, just pretend you don't remember anything."

Stephanie smiled weakly, "You know I can keep a secret. I'm not going to risk forgetting everything I've learned, that there is something out there among those stars. That changes my world."

"Well a lot of what's out there is rather like the weevil that tried to eat us."

"And from what you've said, a lot of it is pretty damn cool."

"Yeah, that's true." Kate paused. Stephanie had untangled herself and was sitting cross-legged now, smiling. "So are you going to be alright?"

The dark haired girl shrugged. "Is anyone ever?"

"Your as damn sarcastic as I remember."

"It's one of my better traits, makes up for the stubbornness."

"Well, take care." Kate stood and stretched.

"You too." Stephanie called after her as she climbed down the tree. She found herself wondering about parallel universes. She'd never run across one herself but she had heard about them often enough. Was there one out there somewhere where she had never had to run away? Where she and Steph grew to adulthood together, were at university, were still together, and were still in love? Was there a place where the first awkward sparks of young affection had grown into something true and deep? Her heart ached for that last possibility, for the potential future never known.

She felt a strange urge to look back as she crossed the meadow, but she didn't. She's already spent enough of her short life doing that.

…

Jack stepped into the Hub and was greeted by the sound of laughter. He followed the sound to find his crack team of alien catchers gathered around the couch with Jenny and Kate, looking over what appeared to be a photo album.

"Don't you all have work to do?" he suggested, not truly meaning it.

"No Rift activity for the last two days," replied Tosh.

"The weevils are keeping quiet for once, too," added Ianto.

"Kate's showing off her scrap book from her travels," piped in Gwen.

Jack pulled up a chair and took a seat. "Well, I guess that counts as alien. Let's take a look." He leaned over to look at the book and nearly did a double take.

There was a set of two photos. In both of them, Kate was dressed in a long red coat with golden buttons, knee-high boots, leather pants, and a close-fitting top. A top hat was set at a rakish angle on her head, and a whip was coiled in her hand. In one, she looked very serious as she stood with her other hand resting on the back of an enormous blue, winged, tiger-like creature. In the next image, her face had broken into an open smile, and the tiger creature was transformed into a young, blue humanoid, which appeared to be trying to tickle her.

"Now while my imagination can come up with some interesting explanations for this, I suspect the truth is probably funnier."

Kate beamed. "Oh, this is from when I worked in a traveling show for a while. It was about two years before I met Jenny. I was out of money, and traveling through a region of space where the code on the digital currency was too complicated for me to forge. I ran into a sort of circus, right when their last beast tamer ran out on them. I took the job to get free board and transport to the other side of the galaxy."  
"Beast tamer?" asked Ianto, in a deadpan tone.

"Well, not really. It was all an act. You see, Kishao, the blue guy, was a shape shifter. He would go into his animal form, and we'd do the show like he really was a big, dangerous animal. He had a great routine jumping through rings of fire, and roaring, all that--he was a complete show off. A bit of a flirt, too, but I told him I wasn't a cat person and after that he kept his paws to himself."

Gwen giggled. "Did the audience ever notice he seemed too smart for a big cat?"

"Usually not. For the longest time Kishao wanted to make shape changing back the final part of the act. We tried it a few times, but it never went over well. I don't think audiences liked realizing they'd been fooled."

"I remember that from when I used to work in a traveling show, too. Interesting life. How long did you stay with it?" asked Jack.

"Oh, about half a year, until I got where I was going. I made some good friends there, I was sad to see them go." Kate flipped to the next page. Gwen and Tosh both made "awww" sounds at the next picture.

A small creature that greatly resembled a miniature kangaroo, about the size of a rat, with cheetah spots and a horn on its head, was sitting on the TARDIS console chewing on something.

"That thing looks disgustingly cute, what is it?" asked Owen.

Kate grinned. "The only other traveling companion I've had so far, aside from Jenny."

"And the way she talks about it, you would have thought it was sentient, and not just a fairly bright rodentoid," added Jenny, who had clearly heard it all before.

"Well, she was smart, at least as intelligent as an Earth parrot," said Kate. Jenny scowled. Jack was mildly surprised that Jenny, who seemed like she would like anything cute and fluffy, appeared to loathe the memory of this creature.

Owen found this very amusing. "I do believe you are jealous of a kangaroo rat."

"Shishi was a Vonzuco, not a rat!" snapped Kate indignantly.

"Yeah, well, she chewed computer cables like one."

"You're just jealous because she was part of my life before you," teased Kate.

"I can't believe were having this argument over a rat--a dead rat, for that matter."

"You didn't kill it did you?" asked Tosh in mild horror.

Jenny made an exasperated noise. "No, the damn thing just keeled over dead one morning. They don't live very long. Kate was heartbroken."

"It's sad when pets die. I was devastated when my cat got run over." All eyes turned to Owen.

Jack got an odd expression. "Since when did you have a cat?"

"A couple years back. What, do I not seem like a cat person?"

"More the weevil sort," suggested Tosh.

"And barely that," added Ianto. "Every time I've asked him to feed the weevils he's forgotten."

Owen threw his hands up in annoyance. "Alright, so we've established I'm not the lovey-dovey sort. Can we move on?"

"Fine," laughed Jenny, leaning over Kate and flipping to a random page. Gwen and Tosh cooed over that one, too.

Five children, three human, two clearly not, waved back from around the TARDIS's main console. One human was a boy about ten; he held an infant in his arms. A girl of around five held his other hand. They all had the same shade of black hair, and were clearly siblings. They were dressed in fairly non-descript gray clothes. To their right, two aliens around the size of seven-year-old human children stood together. They had a bluish tint to their skin and red eyes. Their gender was not clear. One was sucking his/her thumb.

"Running a daycare service, were you?" asked Tosh, not noticing the distinct "don't say anything" motions Jenny was making.

Kate looked at the picture as if seeing it clearly for the first time. "No. I took care of them for a few days after their parents all died."

The cheery atmosphere of the room died with a bit of twitching. Jack took the photo album to look at the picture more closely. "What happened?" He could see now the slightly dazed expression of the children, the way the siblings clung together, normal reactions for the recently orphaned.

Jenny whispered in Kate's ear. "You don't have to tell that story now if you don't want to."

Kate shook her head. "I might as well. They asked what my travels were like. I shouldn't gloss over the sad bits." She leaned back on the couch, looking up at the ceiling, where Myfanwy was flying in lazy circles. "I was traveling in the Hijuko system, around the forty-third century. I was about fourteen. My last jump with the TARDIS had gone horribly wrong and I ended up at an out of the way space port with a completely powerless TARDIS. I bought passage on a human-owned transport ship called the _Aurora_. It was to go from human controlled space, into Shievaco controlled space. The two species were at that time at peace."

Jack's eyes went wide and he opened his mouth to speak. Kate held up her hand to shush him. "I know you know what was about to happen then; you're from the future, you're probably read all about it in your history text book. I didn't know, though. I'd never been that far in the future before, and none of my father's books covered history."

Three days out, we picked up what we thought were pirates on our ship's scanner. The captain made all the children go hide in the ship's cargo hold. I was included in the children. I didn't argue; the TARDIS was in the hold. I wanted to protect it.

The captain had dealt with pirates before. He expected them to fire at the ship enough to bring down its shields, and then board and try to take the ship in melee combat. There wasn't much valuable on a transport ship, aside from the ship itself, so that's what pirates were usually after. The captain thought the crew and passengers would be enough to repel boarders.

"But they weren't pirates, were they?" asked Jack quietly.

"No, no they weren't. Instead of firing at the apex of the shields as expected, they went straight for the engines. Old transport ships like the _Aurora_ used a fairly unstable sort of fusion core. A military ship would never use something like that, but the _Aurora_ was designed for cheap energy and with the expectation it would never see combat.

"I barely managed to get the children into the TARDIS and throw up its shields before the ship exploded. There was no time to save anyone else. The TARDIS was buffeted about a bit, but it weathered the blast, and floated in space in the guise of wreckage from the ship.

"Four of the children died right away. They were Nivocos, a highly psychic species whose family units live with a pack consciousness. The sudden death of their parents was too much for them. The oldest of the Nivocos held out for a little longer than the other four. I tried to help her, but the shock killed her after about a day. None of them are in the photo."

Jenny hugged Kate, and she buried her face in her coat. She wasn't crying, but the hands that clung to Jenny's shoulders were trembling. Jenny rubbed her back in slow circles, until the shaking eased.

The members of Torchwood shifted uncomfortably. Gwen looked like she was about to cry. Tosh was biting her lip in the way she did when faced with a social situation she had no answer for. Ianto looked distant, idly stirring his coffee. Owen stared sourly at his own hands.

Jack picked up the dropped thread of the story. "History books teach that the transport ship _Aurora_ was destroyed by a Shievaco ship as the first act of war against the Great and Bountiful Human Empire, following a failed trade agreement between the two races. It would be an ugly conflict that would drag on for nearly fifty earth years. Most historical accounts record that after the destruction of the _Aurora,_ an escape pod containing several children got away, and was picked up several days later."

Kate looked up. "Yes, that was the TARDIS being bright. After the blast we drifted for a few days disguised as rubble. I was too scared to send out a distress signal. However, when the TARDIS's sensors eventually picked up an approaching human ship, its chameleon circuit changed to look like an escape pod.

"We were picked up. I let them take the three human children. They had living relatives back on a nearby colony. The other two children, they were Shievaco. I didn't think they would be safe among the humans once I learned about the war. I hid them in the TARDIS.

"It took about a month before the TARDIS had enough power again to do a basic transport to Shievaco space. Shielding against the exploding ship had basically drained it. Once I got to Shievaco I looked around as discreetly as I could until I found some surviving family for the two Shievaco children." She finished her story. They sat about morosely, listening half-heartedly to Myfanwy squawk about something.

Owen suddenly sprang to his feet. "Well, now that we've once again established that all sentient species are cruel, life is bitter, and the universe in general sucks, I'm going to get back to that autopsy I was working on."

Jack caught the back of his coat, and solidly yanked him back into his chair. "Oi, hold it a minute there. I think there's more to the story." Jack steepled his hands, as he looked at the book in his lap.

"Kate, what were the two Shievaco children's names?"

"Osho and Asha"

Jack smiled. "I thought that sounded familiar. Asha grew up to be a great diplomat. She negotiated and signed the treaty that ended the war fifty years later."

Jenny poked Kate playfully in the ribs. "See, you actually did well for once."

Kate shrugged, "I'm always trying not to meddle with history, but it always seems inevitably to happen. Sometimes I wonder if the TARDIS purposely takes me to crucial moments, just to see what will happen."

"The Doctor was like that," said Jack thoughtfully. "Always at the eye of the hurricane whether he meant to be or not."

"He doesn't have Jenny with him--she can smile a hurricane into giving up its malice."

"I don't smile that much," griped Jenny. The tension that had filled the room began to ease as the girls bickered good-naturedly.

"Oh yes you do. You're like a hyper bit of sunshine, you just smile at an enemy soldier and he puts his gun down, forgets why he had it in the first place. You waltz into a tense situation and it defuses itself. You have charm, I don't have charm."

"You have charm."

"No I have wit. I can talk myself out of a situation, but I can't charm my way out."

Jenny rolled her eyes. "And yet somehow, with both of our talents, we still end up getting shot at a lot."

"Wit and charm only go so far. Running is also very important."

"I like the running."

Ianto stood up, stretching, "And on that happy note, I'm going to go feed Myfanwy before she tries to eat one of us." Tosh stood as well, leaning her neck to the side to get out a crick. "I think that program I was running should be done by now, that or my computer's crashed. I hope it's not the latter."

When Gwen and Owen showed no great inspiration to get moving Jack clapped his hands and gave them both pointed looks. "Alright, story time is over. I assume I am actually paying you all to work so get to it."

The team dispersed throughout the Hub, and Kate and Jenny made their farewells. As Jack watched the two of them depart, hands around each other's waists, giggling about something, he was glad he hadn't told them what happened to Osho. Kate didn't need to know the other child she saved grew up to be a general, eventually tried and executed for war crimes.


	10. Chapter 10

Authors Note: The Story is now entering its second ark. It will continue from where the first part left off, but there will be new conflicts, problems ect. As I have warned before it will continue to get progressively darker, although not enough to warrant a mature rating. Enjoy.

Chapter 10

--Two Weeks Later—

It was not a good morning at Torchwood. During the night Myfanwy must have gotten bored. At least, that was the only explanation anyone could come up with for why she tried to eat Tosh's computer. Ianto arrived early as was his habit, and found Tosh's workstation strewn about the room, the one remaining computer bearing a very beak-shaped dent in it.

The sounds Tosh made upon entering the Hub and seeing the remnants of her prized technology were somewhere between a gasp, a scream and a moan. Jack might even have found it funny if Tosh had not proceeded to curse earnestly in Japanese, swearing to kill the dinosaur. Jack was glad Myfanwy had gone off to hide somewhere or Tosh might have made good on her threat.

Following such a morning, Jack decided it was a good afternoon to get out of the Hub. As the Rift was being good for once and there was not much to do, he took the opportunity to go visit Kate.

When he arrived he was mildly surprised to find evidence of some serious home improvement going on. The gutters had been cleaned, the front door repainted, the fence whitewashed, and the garden weeded. He rang the doorbell and got no response.

"I'm up here," yelled a voice from the roof. "I can't stop what I'm doing, but if you go around the side yard there's a ladder."

Jack diligently went around and joined Kate on the roof. She was dressed more informally today, an old t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, jeans cut off at the knees, tennis shoes, and her hair caught back in a messy braid and covered by a red bandana.

She had a mouth full of nails, which she was using to replace damaged roof shingles with new ones. Except instead of using a hammer, she would line up the nail, and then point a device that looked rather reminiscent of the Doctor's sonic screw driver at it, and the nail would go into the wood as if hit.

Jack raised an eyebrow. "Let me guess, sonic hammer?"

Kate spat the nails into her hand, "Yep. Jenny told me about the sonic screwdriver her dad used. We found plans for a similar device in the TARDIS library and built this. It's very useful, opens doors too." Kate wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and sat down, legs dangling over the side of the roof. Jack sat beside her. Kate seemed to have no fear of heights, but then again, Jack didn't either.

"So were is Jenny?"

"She went for a hike. If she doesn't get horribly lost, she should be back in an hour or two."

"So tell me, why are you fixing the roof?"

"Because it needs fixing."

"It's needed fixing for a while. You didn't seem very worried about it when you were thirteen."

"I was self-centered. Not a very good daughter. I'm trying to do better."

"Which is why you're trying to assuage your guilt about getting ready to leave your mother again."

Kate leaned back, flopping against the roof. "You don't miss a thing, do you Captain."

"I'm an observant man." He gave Kate a pointed look. "Do you really think your mother will miss you any less, just because you put the house in order before you vanish again?"

"I was going to tell her before I left, and Jenny and I would be back in a week or two."

"It'll still break her heart."

"Her heart's already broken. She lost her little girl, I'm hardly that person anymore."

"Your still her daughter."

"Yeah, but eight years and a hell of a lot of life experience older. I know it sounds stupid after all those years of fighting to get home, but I don't think I belong here any more, Jack. I've got a room full of a children's things I have no use for, clothes that don't fit and bed sheets with ponies on them. I can't exactly just pick up things where I left off."

"You could always go to University, you're not too old."

"And study what? I've been in the greatest libraries and schools in existence. There is no university in Britain that could teach me more about science and technology than I already know."

"You could get a job."

Kate sat up and looked at him, "Will you hire me?"

"No."

"Oh come on, who's better equipped to deal with aliens than me?"

"That's not the point--you're too young."

"I'm twenty one! No one on your team is past thirty."

"Exactly. I want to see you live well past that age."

"Stop trying to protect me. You couldn't do it before, you certainly can't do it now." Kate knew her words were cruel but anger blinded her. "Believe me when I tell you, Jack, that Torchwood can't do anything worse to me that has already happened. Do you have any idea of the things I faced as a frightened child! I haven't got a crumb of innocence left to protect. Do you really think I haven't fought for my life before, haven't seen death, and haven't killed? I've seen the best and the worst the universe has to offer. I've seen beautiful wonderful things, sights beyond your imagination, and kindness that's not that different from what you would find on earth. But I've also faced the worse the universe has to offer, I've seen war, and genocide, and everyday cruelties that are worse than that. Don't you dare act like you know what's good for me."

Funny how Kate could seem both so old and incredibly young at the same time. Her eyes were a cool green like light reflecting off the smooth ashes left by a fire. Yet in her voice, her movements, her expression, Jack could see the terrified, insecure girl he had pushed into the TARDIS and told to run for her life. Neither of them was saying it, but they both knew she blamed Jack. It wasn't logical, but she did. She held him accountable for all the fear, all the loneliness, everything that had happened since he and Torchwood had failed to keep her safe as they had promised.

"Kate." Jack reached for her and she shrugged him off. Why had he thought that if she wouldn't accept his comfort at thirteen she would at twenty-one? Because he could not apologize for the past, he did so for the present.

"I'm sorry if I brought your mom into this. I had no right. I guess I don't get to tell you what to do either. Whether you go or stay is your decision to make."

"Thank you." A moment passed in silence. Kate lay back down, sunning herself like a lazy cat as if exhausted by her outburst.

"Your still not going to give me a job, are you?"

"Nope. Maybe you are an adult, but I still wouldn't be able to bring myself to send you into danger."

"I suppose I can accept that." She leaned up on an elbow. "I'm still leaving in two weeks time. I'm bored out of my mind and Jenny is going stir crazy. She's not happy unless she's running to or away from something."

"You two could always play tag."

"Been there, done that, almost got arrested by Cardiff's finest for indecent exposure. Honestly though, I don't know why they felt the need to patrol the countryside at the city's edge in the middle of the night. Fortunately the officer who found us was too embarrassed to do more that tell us to put on our clothes and go home."

"Tell me was his name PC Davidson."

"You know, I think it was."

Jack nearly died laughing. "I asked the local police to monitor the outskirts of the city, because I thought some weevils might have set up shop there. I just told them to report anything suspicious. You'll be glad to know Jenny's and your antics apparently don't fall under that category in Cardiff."

"Good to know. I try not to spook the locals when I can."

"So where will you go?"

"Ansterfarius. I've heard it has the loveliest crystal lakes. I've seen a lot of things, but never a crystal lake. I figured I ought to fix that."

"Kid, I have the feeling that you will do that and more."

Of course, the next day everything went horribly wrong and any travel plans were completely forgotten. It started as a quiet afternoon. Gwen and Owen were in the field looking into some mysterious disappearances. Tosh was trying to do paperwork at her desk, without much heart for it. Ianto was somewhere in the vaults.

Kate and Jenny were in Jack's office, distracting him from his work. They had brought in an artifact Kate had picked up in her travels and hoped Jack might be able to help her identify. It was a metal cube covered in complex symbols done in multiple colors. When she pressed certain symbols they lit up. That was all she had been able to get it to do though.

Jack grinned when he saw the box. "I used to have one of these as a kid."

"What does it do?" asked Jenny hopefully.

"Let me show you." Jack tapped several symbols and then dragged his fingers over them. They symbols moved. After fiddling for a few more minutes Jack had all matching symbols in line. The box flashed brightly and popped up. In the center a small glowing orb played the Beetles song "Help".

Jenny clapped her hands and Kate rolled her eyes.

"So for all the snazzy appearance it's just a combined rubix cube music box?"

"Yep. If you out in different combinations you should get different songs. I used to have one that played all the old Cole Porter songs.

As the last strains of the song died away Jack realized there was an alarm ringing. If you worked at Torchwood long enough you became almost immune to beeping sounds. Something was always going off, be it the hub door, a warning about an encroaching alien fleet, or the coffee maker announcing it was done.

This alarm however had a very distinctive wail. It was the 'Hub has just been breached by a known hostile' alarm. Damn, why did this have to happen on a day when Kate and Jenny where in the Hub, and most of the team was away?

Jack bolted for his office door with his gun drawn. The last thing he saw was Tosh slumped over her computer consul before a cold blast to the side of the neck sent him into the blackness of death.

"Jack." Kate knelt by the collapsed Captain checking for a pulse. Jenny vaulted past her already in combat mode. She dodged another laser blast and dove towards the source, a man in a suit holding some sort of screwdriver. If it wouldn't have been completely out of place she would have thought he looked like Herald Saxon the former prime minister.

His eyes went wide when he saw her. "Doctor?" he asked in mild disbelief. Jenny tackled him and they went down fighting. Jenny managed to get a hold of his screwdriver and send it skittering across the walkway. Jenny soon had the skinny man pinned, his arm twisted painfully behind his back.

"Jack's dead." Kate yelled. She had not understood that he had truly died the times she had seen him killed before. Scrambling to her feet, she cursed angrily in several languages not meant to be spoken with human vocal cords, made all the more horrible by the sob she was suppressing. She picked up Jack's fallen weapon and stalked towards the trapped man. "I'm going to kill this bastard!"

"No, as a matter of fact, I think your not," said the man with far more confidence than one in his position should possess. He clicked a small device in his left hand. Everything around them went blurry for a second. From the lurch in her stomach Kate recognized the familiar feel of teleportation.

They all materialized again, Jack's body, Kate, Jenny and the strange man, in the center of a room surrounded by armed human soldiers. Had she not been in a situation of intense stress Kate might even have marveled at the wonder of the picture window, which looked out upon the earth floating in space.

"Your going to let me go, or these fine marines will shoot your red haired friend," said the man in a sharp commanding voice. Jenny considered her options, and with a frustrated snarl, released the man. He stood up with surprising dignity, brushing his coat off.

He cast a cold glance at Kate. "You're going to want to drop your gun as well. You'd be stone dead before you could pull the trigger." Kate narrowed her eyes and let the weapon slowly fall from her hands. Keeping a cautious watch of her surroundings she slowly edged over, until she was standing by Jenny. They faced the room back to back, waiting for the next move to be made.

"Computer, put up a localized force field around the two strangers." A brilliant blue light sprung up around Kate and Jenny. The man smirked when he saw Kate's eyes go wide at the sight of something behind him.

He whirled around with a flourish and blasted the charging Jack with a small laser he had concealed in his sleeve. "Oh don't look so surprised. Did the freak never tell you he couldn't die? Just keeps coming back, makes him rather fun to torture, actually."

He motioned to one of the soldiers. "Just shoot him every time he starts twitching again." That dealt with, he began to circle the force field like a prowling cheetah.

"Now, Doctor, you must tell me how you managed this truly unusual regeneration. Were you trying to come back as ginger and something went horribly wrong?"

"I'm not the Doctor."

"Oh really? Doctor, I know the feeling of your presence like an itch on the back of my neck. Did you really think this body would fool me? "

"No, seriously, I'm not the Doctor."

The man paused mid step and moved closer to the force field, looking suspiciously at Jenny. "Hm, let me check that." He pressed his hand through the force field. Jenny tried to step back, but there was nowhere to run. An invisible force suddenly immobilized her, as if the air around her had turned to cement.

The man pressed his hand against her temple and closed his eyes. Jenny cried out in pain and tried to get away. "Leave her alone!" snarled Kate, as helpless as her friend. After a moment the man stepped back, looking highly amused.

"Interesting," he mumbled mostly to himself, "for the result of stolen extrapolated DNA, you turned out remarkably well. I'd say you rather take after the Doctor's fifth incarnation, but a bit better dressed." The man shook his head as if returning his focus to the present.

He clasped one hand behind his back and made a shallow bow. "Forgive me. It seems that in my assumptions I failed to realize we had never been introduced. I am the last of the full-blooded Time Lords, aside from the Doctor. My name is the Master and you will obey me."

Kate felt a cold shiver of apprehension run down her spine. She retreated to sarcasm, as it was usually the best refuge from fear. "Well that's not presumptuous or anything."

The Master made a strange half smile. "I strive for presumption at the very least." He cocked his head slightly to the side as he looked at Kate, resuming his circling. "Now what exactly are you? I sense you as being both Time Lord and human, except that's impossible. The species aren't compatible, I've tried."

In a supple movement, he leaned forward, reaching trough the force field again and pressing his hand against Kate's forehead. Kate had more mental barriers than Jenny. She had been around psychic species before, and knew enough to at least keep a low level psychic out.

But the Master was over nine centuries old, and she had only been around for two decades. She put up just enough resistance for the Master to tear parts of her mind, shattering memories, as he rooted around like a bull in a china shop.

Kate collapsed, curling into a protective ball when the Master released her. Her eyes were bleeding. Jenny knelt beside her protectively. She glared at the Master, as if silently calculating exactly how much force it would take to snap his neck.

The Master laughed. "So you're Rodageit's kid. Well, he only could ever get anything done by accident."

Kate sat up weakly, clinging to Jenny for support. "You knew my father?"

"Only in passing, always suspected he wasn't quite all there."

"Big words from the guy who calls himself the Master," snapped Jenny.

"Ah, we must all have our own little psychoses. I'm sure I can help you two develop some of your own."

He knelt to retrieve his screwdriver from the floor; it had been transported along with them earlier. He weighed it in his hand thoughtfully.

"I've decided not to kill either of you yet. A bit of nostalgia for my own species perhaps. If little else I'm sure I can use you both against the Doctor."

"Now, I do however think that you, Jenny, are a bit too dangerous to keep around as you are." He held up the screwdriver. "Tell me, do you know what this is?"

"A sonic screwdriver, my Dad had one. You're not going to scare me with that."

"A contraire, it is a laser screwdriver. An infinitely more useful device." He pointed it at Jenny. "Now I could make you a hundred years old, except I've learned that even old Time Lords are dangerous. I think I will do better not to leave you with an adult mind. How about we make your body match your real age?"

He clicked a button and zapped Jenny. She writhed on the floor in pain as her body realigned itself. When she stopped, a very angry three year old glared up the Master. What had previously been her white tank top now dwarfed her as a dress. She tried to speak; but she couldn't get out anything more complicated than "I hate you!" So she just ended up yelling and beating her small fists against the force field.

Kate knelt by the child, pulling her back from the force field wall before she hurt herself. "What have you done? Turn her back!"

"I reverted her body to that of a child's. I imagine it's rather unpleasant for her adult mind to be banging about in the brain of a child's--all those synapses barely formed yet. Considering she's never been a child before, this state might drive her a bit mad. Should be interesting."

The child in Kate's arms ceased screaming and began to sob. Jenny wasn't having fun with the complete loss of emotional control that came with her transformation. Kate tried to rock the child reassuringly, but didn't succeed.

"So are you going to turn me into a kid too? I should warn you I was something of a terror at that age."

The Master shook his head. "No, I'm going to leave you just as you are for the time being. You have just enough fear, hatred, and hidden cruelty to be useful to me."

"If you're trying to recruit me to be your evil minion, shooting my friends and turning my girlfriend into a toddler isn't helping your case."

The Master didn't seem phased. "We shall see." He clapped his hands. "Computer, transport the prisoners, including the dead man, to the cells. Remove all weapons and lock picks while you're at it."

With another jolt of nausea Kate found Jenny and herself in a small metal cell, a still dead Jack in the one beside them. She tried to calm the wailing child, but it couldn't be done.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Jack returned to life with a pained gasp. No matter how many times it happened, he could never get used to it. He sat up and looked around, taking in the heavy metal bars of his cell.

He could see Kate in the next cell over, leaning with her back against the wall, her eyes closed as if in deep mediation. She still hadn't cleaned the blood tears from her face. The effect was unnerving.

"Kate, you still with me sweetheart?"

Slowly she opened her eyes, blinking, as if even the dim light of the cells was too bright.

"The Master hurt your mind when he took your memories, didn't he?" Jack asked softly.

Kate wrapped her arms tightly around herself. "I tried to keep him out and failed--a few of my memories are torn, some are missing. I can't recall nearly an entire summer of my ninth year, or what cinnamon tastes like. I've been cauterizing the wounds, so nothing else unravels."

Kate stood on shaky feet and wandered over to the bars that separated them. Jack reached through the bars. "You look awful, let me get the blood off your face." He licked the palm of his hand and scrubbed at the dried red on the girl's pale skin. She closed her eyes and wrinkled her nose. Gradually the dried flakes came away.

"My mom used to do that when I was little."

"Clean blood off you?"

"No spit on her palm when she was trying to rub dirt of my face."

"You know, mine did too."

The silence stretched between them. Jack had no doubt Kate was wondering if her mother was safe. He had no words to reassure her. Somewhere, not too far off, in the gaping voluminous cavern of the ships brig, a pipe banged loudly. The moment was broken. Kate turned and stretched with her hands over her head.

"You were dead a long time this round. The damage the semi automatic rifle did to you wasn't pretty." She had reverted to the dry sarcasm she used when faced with an overwhelming situation.

Jack glanced down at his chest where the bullet wounds were now healed, leaving ugly patterns of dried blood and viscous on his skin. "Damn, I liked this shirt," he said examining the shredded remnants of fabric. His pants had fared slightly better, but just barely. "Oh well, I look just as good without a shirt."

"I'd offer you my coat to preserve your modesty, but it's already otherwise employed, and I doubt it would fit you anyway." Kate motioned to a slumbering Jenny, who was wearily curled up on one of the cell's bunks, using the heavy blue garment as a blanket.

"You seem surprisingly unbothered by my whole coming back to life thing."

"Believe me, I've seen weirder, and I am really glad you're not dead. I could, however, have lived a thousand years without watching your skull knit itself back together."

"Sorry about that."

"So do you have any idea who this Master person is?"

"Evil Time Lord, old rival of the Doctor's, mad as a hatter, but in a more malicious way."

"I thought you said the Doctor was the only other remaining Time Lord."

Jack stood up to pace "He was, at least I thought he was. A year ago the Master took over the earth."

Jack held up his hand when Kate tried to protest. "It was all reversed, so it never actually happened in your timeline. It's too complicated for me to explain. But the Doctor stopped the Master, and in the course of events the Master was shot and died."

"So why is he still menacing us, then?"

"That's what I don't know."

The brig was suddenly flooded with light and the sound of heavy footsteps stomped towards them. The Master stormed across the metal walkway that led to the cells. Every atom of his movement was filled with anger and frustration. Two nervous looking soldiers followed behind him. They were young men of solid build and no great intelligence. From the vaguely unfocused look their eyes had, the Master was also probably keeping them under minor mind control.

He slammed his hands up against the bars of Kate's cell. Jenny awoke with a freighted squeak. She quickly crouched behind the secure wall of the coat, glaring at the Master defiantly.

"Why can't I get into your TARDIS!" snapped the Master.

Kate covered her fear with defiance. "I guess she didn't take to you. She's an awfully picky old ship, doesn't like megalomaniacs with God complexes."

The Master did not look amused. He took out his screwdriver and aimed it at the door. The lock clicked open. He motioned to the two guards. "Remove the red haired one, leave the child."

The guards roughly manhandled Kate out of the cell, practically lifting her off her feet. She didn't fight them, best not to create any harsh feelings over a broken nose. She might be able to convince them to help her later. Jenny leapt from her fort and kicked one of the guards solidly on the ankle.

"Her, alone leave!" She seemed to be getting some language abilities back, but only a little bit. The guard showed no sign of pain on his blank face. He merely turned, picked up the struggling child, and carried her back to the other end of the cell, depositing her unceremoniously back on the bunk.

"Jenny stay. Now is not the time to fight." Kate told her. Jenny scowled, but remained where she was." The guards pulled Kate from the cell and clanged the door shut again. They held her on both sides, to prevent any escape attempt she might have considered.

The Master stepped alarmingly close to her. Kate drew back, accidentally banging her head on the cell door.

"Now tell me, why won't your TARDIS open? Do I need a code, a key, a password?"

Kate pressed her lips together. The Master snarled. Then he got a cruel smile. He very gently ran a hand along the side of Kate's face, pressing the tips of his fingers against her temple.

"Do you want me to go into your mind again? Last time I wasn't trying to hurt you, this time I will."

Kate paled and struggled against the guards holding her, but their grip was iron. She spoke in one breath. "It wouldn't do you any good. You can't just take a code or a password from me that will make it work. The TARDIS won't open for you because it's controls are isomorphic and set to my father's signature. It only works for me because I'm his daughter. I have no idea how to reset it, Jenny can't use the TARDIS at all."

The Master frowned, then bared his smooth human-like teeth as if they were fangs. He took a step back and tapped Kate on the nose. "Smart, very smart. That means I have to keep you alive."

Kate snapped at the Masters finger, making him laugh and step back farther. She watched him with cold green eyes. "You still won't be able to get into the TARDIS. I programmed in some subroutines of my own in case of a situation such as this. She won't open if she senses I'm under duress, i.e. someone with me is trying to steal her."

The Master's eyes narrowed. "Well then, you just won't be under duress will you? I'll just wipe your mind clean and use you as a puppet."

"She reacts to my brain waves."

"Ho, ho, you seem to have prepared for every probability. You're quite a bit brighter than your father was. However, I have little doubt that if you put your mind to it you can find a way around your own tricks."

"And why would I do that?"

"Because of this." The Master snapped his fingers and a small holographic projection appeared before them. It was a wavering image of Kate's home. "I can have it destroyed from orbit."

Kate stared at the image in horror, then she realized something. All the statues in the yard had been turned to face east. Years ago she and her mother had agreed on that as a signal. If ever one had to flee an imminent threat and hide, that was how they would get the message across. Somehow her mother had been warned, probably be the remaining members of Torchwood."

"Go ahead, no one's there."

The image fragmented and vanished. "How do you know that!" snapped the Master.

"If you were going to use my Mother against me, you would have brought her here and hurt her in front of me. Your threat is not going to work. She's safe and far away from you. Face it, Master, you don't have any leverage against me. You can't kill me if you ever want to get into the TARDIS, Jack can't die, and something tells me your not going to hurt Jenny until the Doctor is around to witness it."

The Master backhanded her. Kate's head slammed against the bars again, making her vision spin. She slumped in the guards' arms.

"Leave her alone!" yelled Jack, speaking for the first time during this encounter. The Master motioned for one of the guards to shoot Jack. One stayed and held her while the other turned his gun against the cell. The Master returned his focus to Kate, looming over her, ignoring the sound of gunfire.

"You forget, little girl, that just because I can't kill you doesn't mean I can't make you wish I would." Kate felt tremors of fear running through her limbs. She fought down the rapid beating of her twin hearts. She forced a look of calm onto her face. Her terror was only giving the Master more power over her.

"Go ahead and try. I've been tortured before, I've never broken. I know your kind, and you don't scare me. You get off on causing other's pain. It makes you feel godlike, stronger, in charge. But in the end you're just a cat puffing up its tail. No matter how many necks you snap or bones you break, you're still relying on fear and brute force as your source of power. You don't have any strength inside of you, only a rotting insanity you try to escape by forcing it onto others."

The Master rolled his eyes. "Dramatic words, little girl--you'd make a good science fiction heroine, but you've never met me before. I promise I am much more than your average, run of the mill psychopath. I don't care if you fear me, just so long as you learn to obey me." He tapped the center of Kate's forehead very lightly and she instantly went limp.

He turned and strode off. "Bring her." He called to the guards over his shoulder. They lifted the slight body of the unconscious Time Lord and followed.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Kate awoke to pitch darkness and cold. She stretched slowly, finding her muscles stiff from hours of lying on the cold metal floor. She stood and slowly felt around her prison. She could reach up and touch the ceiling, reach out a hand and find the wall. It was basically a solid metal box, six feet by six feet on all sides. Enough so she could stand and walk a step or two, but not really pace. There was a small air vent on the ceiling, and a drain on the floor. There was no sound, save that which she made herself.

So it was to be isolation and sensory deprivation then. Good, that was a game that would take time, which meant the Master thought he had time. He must not realize the free members of Torchwood had probably already alerted UNIT and the rest of the world of the threat. At least she hoped there were free members of Torchwood, surely the Master would have used Jack's team against him if he had captured any of them.

Hopefully this Doctor fellow everyone kept talking about would hurry up and show. It sounded like he could defeat the Master. Barring that, the Earth and its protectors would have to save themselves. Trapped as she was, Kate's main priority was keeping the Master from using her to get into the TARDIS.

She could deal with this situation. It might drive a human a bit crazy, but she was a Time Lord and could withdraw into her own mind. She could live in her memories in a way a short-lived mortal could not.

She sat down and leaned against the wall. She was shivering now. It really was cold. She was thirsty, hungry too. She forced herself to ignore the needs of her body. She closed her eyes and escaped the unnatural darkness around her to find the quiet within herself. There was a presence waiting for her.

Kate clawed at her own head in panic. The Master wasn't in the cell with her, but she could sense him in her head. He must have found a way in while she was unconscious. This time he had shifted in carefully, not doing any damage, but he was there like a slow spreading poison.

She tried to throw him out, but he was too interwoven within her psyche. She couldn't disentangle him without destroying her own mind. The Master's presence wasn't powerful enough to influence or control her, but it let him shift through her memories.

She could feel him tugging one forward from where it was securely suppressed, bringing it to the front of her mind.

_She was walking in the first city she came to after leaving home. It was late and cold. Rain drizzled lightly against the new blue coat she had bought with forged currency. It was a bit too big for her, but she didn't care; it was warm, and it reminded her faintly of Jack. She had not yet given up the hope that Torchwood was looking for her, and would find a way to bring her home._

_She was so lost in her thoughts she almost didn't notice the faint sound of footsteps following her. A month earlier she might have thought nothing of it, but time in this city had taught her caution. She tried speeding up her step and listened; the steps sped up. She slowed for a moment; the steps slowed._

_She considered running, but where would she go? She couldn't lead this person back to the TARDIS, and most streets were abandoned at night. She slipped her hand into her coat pocket and gripped a can of mace she had made a few days before. She turned and faced the approaching footsteps. The shadow of a man paused about a block away. _

_Kate called out to him," I know you're following me and I'm not scared. I'm armed and not afraid to shoot. Just turn around and walk away, and this does not have to get ugly." She spoke with far more bravado then she felt, something she had always been good at._

_The figure didn't move. "I'm warning you!" she snapped, holding her ground. Suddenly a cold blast stuck her from the side, sending static pain through her nervous system. Kate fell to the ground fighting for consciousness. She could just make out a woman with a laser stepping from an alley, before her eyes closed._

_She awoke to find her hands and feet bound, a cold metal floor beneath her cheek. She heard voices and kept her eyes closed._

"_Where do you think we'll get the most for her, the Danubian slave market maybe?" said a man's gruff voice._

"_Not there. She's too rare for that. I think she's the last of her species, whatever she is. That might mean we can get the most from scientists. There's more than one government that would like a chance to examine a before-unseen humanoid." The second voice was that of a woman, more practical and more intelligent than her gruffer companion._

"_She's an awfully cute little thing to let be dissected. If were just going to sell her as a lab rat instead of as an exotic slave I might as well have a go at her first."_

"_No you won't. Whatever we decide, the girl's worth more unharmed. If you need to get off, go find a common whore." The woman snapped._

_The man made an angry snarl, "I don't know why I work with you, you spoil my fun."_

"_You hunt with me because I make us lots of money, at least before you drink up your share of it."_

"_Point taken. So what governments are we going to contact?"_

"_Actually that's plan B. I thought we might try to sell her to a rare species collector first."_

"_I thought most of them wouldn't buy sentient species."_

"_Some will, especially Seritac's.__They tend to consider all other species to be less than sentient. I know one very wealthy Seritac collector, with an impressive private zoo. He might be interested in this girl. I'll get his bid first." _

_Kate opened her eyes to slits to take in her environment. She was lying in what appeared to be the cargo bay of small transport. Near the front of it, a muscular man and a small shrewish woman were sitting by the ships controls arguing. They weren't paying any attention to her. Good._

_Strange, they had only bound her with torn cloth, not even bothering with metal or magnetic cuffs. They must not have thought she was very dangerous. That, or the woman had wanted to avoid the bruises that struggling against harsher materials would have caused to Kate's wrists, and the damage those bruises would have done to her "value". _

_Kate tried to wiggle out of the bonds, or tear the fabric, but the knots were good. She glanced around, looking for a way to cut her bonds. There was a jagged bit on a nearby crate. Not the brightest captors were they, leaving her near a way to break her bonds. They must have been used to prisoners too terrified to try and escape. Kate's fear only drove her on. Carefully she inched her way over to the crate, and hooked her bound hands around the edge. She moved the knotted cloth quietly and quickly against the jagged edge. She couldn't help but scrape the skin of her wrists while doing it; she was too scared to care. Better to bleed now than find herself in a slave market or zoo._

_After a few painful minutes of yanking, while keeping a cautious eye on her captors, the fabric tore silently. She quickly knelt and unbound her feet. Staying crouched, she slipped completely behind the crate. She registered vaguely that the screen at the front of the ship was showing a planet side image, in fact an empty warehouse. There appeared to be only one exit from the ship, and it was in plain view of her captors. So she would have to fight instead of run. She needed a weapon now. They had taken her coat, and with it her mace. _

_Her eyes lit upon a blaster sitting on a console, not too far back from the arguing pair. Their voices were getting louder, their attention focused on the debate between them. Kate had lost the thread of their contention a while ago, so long as they stayed distracted._

_She crawled forward carefully and slowly until she reached the end of the crates that provided her cover. For the final stretch she would have to go directly behind her captors. She prayed to whatever goddesses were listening and, scrambling to her feet, bolted to the console. _

_The woman noticed just as Kate's hand closed around the weapon. Kate fired as the woman was turning around drawing her own weapon. Kate had never fired a weapon before, but it was simple tool and her opponent was only a few feet away; all she had to do was point and click. A red blast shot from the weapon and tore apart the woman's head. The part of Kate that wasn't running on adrenaline registered with horror that the blaster had not been set to stun as she had thought, and that she had just killed. The part of her that was focused on survival was too frightened to care. _

_The man tried to lunge at her, but she dove out of the way and fired again, missing three consecutive shots and then hitting him in the shoulder. He fell to the floor, howling in pain. Kate trained the weapon on him._

"_Hands where I can see them now!" Her former captor released his grip on his useless right arm and held up his left. It was stained with dark red blood, human blood. Kate fought the urge to retch--why did her attackers have to be human? Of all those out there she could end up fighting, why her own species? The scent of iron-rich blood and death, confined in the small shuttle, sickened her._

"_Don't kill me," pleaded the man._

"_How did you find me?"_

"_My friend," he said motioning at the dead woman, "she had a scanner that picked up unusual bio signals. We scanned the city to see if there were any rare species worth kidnapping. Yours showed up, humanoid body, two hearts, low body temp. We'd never seen the like before. You were alone, vulnerable, easy to catch."_

_Kate found anger beginning to bubble up "and you just thought you could grab me off the streets and sell me like an animal?"_

"_Well, yeah." Kate was never quite sure if she fired on purpose or if her fingers just clenched. Red blossomed across the man's chest, and he collapsed, convulsing. After a moment the convulsions ceased, and he lay dead._

_The blaster tumbled from Kate's hand. The urge to run welled up in her overwhelmingly. She noticed her coat sitting forgotten on the back of one of the chairs. Out of impulse she snatched it up._

_Then she ran to the hatch on the other side of the ship and slammed the open key so hard her hand stung. The door swung open and she dashed across the warehouse, flung open a door, and fled into the night. To her credit, she made it three blocks before she vomited in a dark alley. She leaned against a wall, trembling and sobbing, until the last of the adrenaline eased from her system. _

_Then she calmed herself, pulled on her coat against the night chill, and tried to get her bearings. All the same, it took her until dawn to find her way back to the TARDIS. When she got there she jammed a set of likely looking coordinates into the navigation system and activated it. She didn't care where she went as long as it was far away._

Kate's eyes snapped open with a gasp. Only blackness greeted her. The Master's voice echoed inside her mind and all around her. "You remember what it's like, don't you, to be small and helpless, to be overwhelmed by fear and terror. You didn't handle that situation very well, did you? You broke your own code and killed."

"I had no choice," she hissed.

"Oh did you really? I'll grant that the woman might have been almost an accident, but what of the man? Did you kill him because you had to, or because you were angry? You weren't good or clever enough to do better than you did. Now doesn't that make you just another selfish person, full of hate and fear, only a few steps higher than me in your own self-righteous view of the world?"

"Get out of my mind, you bastard. What the hell do you want, anyway?!" Kate screamed at the darkness.

Suddenly her prison was suffused in light, as a section of the wall opened. Kate blinked half blindly at the Master. He leaned against the opening like a languid cat.

"I wanted you to see who you really were."

"I know who I am. If nothing else I know that." Kate stood slowly, sheltering her eyes from the light with her hand. She feared him, she feared him so much. She needed to run and hide, but there was nowhere to go. Like a trapped rat, she had no choice but to stand her ground, and keep her face defiant.

"Oh do you really. You're playing so hard to be the little heroine, protect your friends, do what's right, but that's not what's in your heart. You're neither noble nor good the way your friends are. You're just a selfish frightened child who cares most about her own survival, a trait that I do admire in you. I certainly understand the importance of personal survival at all costs."

"And so what if I am. Does it really matter if I'm not as bloody kind and magnanimous as Jenny, or brave as Jack? They can be my heart and valor for me. I still have enough strength in me to resist you." Kate lowered her hand and raised her eyes meet the Master's cold gaze. It was like looking into the eye of a hurricane. She felt both drawn in and repulsed.

"Oh, it matters. Don't you see that you're a burden to them, that they are infinitely nobler than you? How many times has Jack died trying to protect you? Could you do that? You've got thirteen lives, and you haven't risked even one of them for your friends. And, Jenny, do you really think she doesn't notice your pettiness? You don't think it disturbs her how quickly your willing to resort to killing? She doesn't stay with you out of love, but because she knows you need her. You'd be far too dangerous without her keeping you in check. She knows, and she's just too nice to give up hope on you."

"That's a lie!"

"Are you so certain? Do you like this woman you've become, cold and sharp as flint? Filled more with necessity than pity, more prone to anger than kindness. What would the child you were before think of what you've become?"

Kate crossed her arms. She wasn't going to let him get to her. "So I don't like myself. Not like I'm the only person with that particular issue. Why do you think that's going to get me to open the TARDIS?"

"Because of what I can offer you. I could de-age you and clear your mind of all memories since you left Earth. I could give you the last eight years back, return you to who you were. Make you innocent, and kind, and idealistic again. You could pick you life back up where you left off, be the child your mother lost."

Kate slumped against the wall. She felt as if the breath had been stolen from her lungs, the very marrow from her bones. It was a trick, she knew it, so why was it so hard to see that?"

"What good would it do me to return to my former self if I then had to live in an Earth under your dominion?"

"I won't be conquering the earth by military force this time, at least not completely. Been there, done that, want to do something new. This time I'll be a little subtler, spread my influence bit by bit, make a game of toying with your planet's governments behind the scenes. It wouldn't have such a big effect on day-to-day life in Cardiff."

Kate closed her eyes. She wanted this, she wanted this so much, but to accept it would be the most selfish thing she had ever done. It would be suicide as far as her current self went, but maybe that would be for the best. "Would you release Jack and Jenny?"

The Master gave her a long look. "How gullible do you think I am? No, of course not. They stay on this ship, but you wouldn't miss them, I'd make you forget them."

And that was exactly the wrong thing to say. The Master thought he understood her, but he didn't not truly, not completely. He had looked inside her mind, but his experiences were too different from hers to truly comprehend what he had seen.

Kate took a deep breath; felt the stale recycled air of the ship heavy in her lungs. She knew this story. She knew this story well. Looking back would destroy her, even if it was what she wanted most in the world. She was many, many things, but a traitor would never be one of them. Jenny--she couldn't let go of Jenny. Those bright eyes, that warmth, she couldn't let go of that.

"Did you really think I would abandon them? I might be willing to destroy all other parts of myself, but the part of me that loves them, that part deserves to live."

"They don't need you."

"I think that while facing a monster like you, I'm exactly what they do need."

"Oh really?" rather than angry, the Master seemed mostly amused and curious. "So you've made up your mind. You won't take the way out I'm offering you, so I suppose you're going to fight me. Go on, then, hate me, and give your all to destroy me. It's the least you can do for this ridiculous universe and your pathetic friends. Let's see what kind of monster you become before all this is said and done. Will even Jenny be able to love you then?"

As the Master opened his mouth to laugh, Kate struck out. The Master hadn't completely untangled his mind from hers, which left him vulnerable. She pushed the link back to him, crashing into his mind like a rock through a window. She cast about quickly looking for any weakness she could use against him. She knew she didn't have long before he marshaled and threw her out.

The madness, the drums, the cold of it all was almost overwhelming, yet she soon found what she was looking for. It wasn't well hidden, it couldn't be. It was too central to everything that the Master was.

Kate was forced painfully back into her own mind, and the link between them snapped. Kate tumbled to the floor, landing hard. The Master clutched at the doorframe, trembling violently. The fury in his eye went beyond hatred.

Kate stood weakly, strange confidence flowing through her. She knew the Master's deepest secret. "You're in love. You're in love with the Doctor!" she crowed. "In your own sick, twisted way he's the center of your universe. You do everything you do because of love, to bring him closer to you, to compete with him. For all your narcissism, love is the emotion that rules you."

The Master had crossed the room in a split second and slammed her against the wall, his hand on her throat. His eyes of fire stared into hers. "Never speak of that again!" He snarled and then threw her down. A cold smile crossed his lips. "In fact I think I might just have to suspend your ability to speak altogether." He knelt and pressed the laser screwdriver against her throat. Kate felt something lock and contract in her voice box. She tried to curse but no sound came out. "While I'm at it, I think in true Shakespearian style I might just take your writing and hand signs as well." Kate writhed as connections in her brain snapped and sealed off.

The Master stormed from the room leaving Kate where she had fallen. As he departed he snapped at a waiting guard, "Put her back in the brig with the others. I'll deal with her again later."


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Kate landed back in the cell with a painful thud. She was regretting not trying to kick them in the kidneys when she'd had he chance. She spat at their retreating backs.

"Kate!" The blond toddler threw her small arms around her. Normally a happy three-year-old couldn't do Kate much damage, but she was pretty sure her ribs were a bit bruised. She was too tired to push the child away. She couldn't bring herself to think of the little girl as Jenny. It was too strange.

Jack stood from the bed where he had been dozing and wrapped his hands around the bars that separated their cells. He looked at Kate, sadly taking in the ugly bruising on her throat and the exhausted look on her face. "He tortured you?" It was more a statement then a question.

Kate nodded slowly. She tried to speak but no sound came out. Jenny laid a finger against Kate's lips. "The Master stole her voice."

"Oh Kate," murmured Jack. She had never seen him cry, but he looked close at the moment. There was so much weariness in those ancient eyes. Kate was another in a long line of innocents who he had failed to protect. She stood, wincing slightly, and walked over to the bars. She took his hands in hers, trying to somehow convey that she was all right. He seemed to understand.

"Is the TARDIS safe?" he asked softly. Kate nodded.

"Good. Hold out as long as you can. If he gains access to a time machine, it's all over."

She realized he was slipping a small scrap of cloth wrapped around something into her hand, she quickly stowed it in a pocket.

Jack whispered into her ear "It's aspirin, I got it off one of the guards. When you get the chance use it against the Master, it will kill him." Kate tried not to think about how Jack had gotten the pills from the guard.

They sprang apart at the sound of approaching footsteps. Jenny whimpered and dove under the coat to hide, scowling out from within the dark folds. She seemed to be progressively acting more and more like a child with all the fears that came with it. The Master walked triumphantly across the brig walkway. Two guards were hauling a battered-looking Ianto Jones behind him. The young man had a split lip, and his normally meticulous clothes and hair were in disarray. It was the first time Kate had ever seen him unshaven.

"Guess who got caught trying to sneak back into the Hub to access Earth's global defense system!" crowed the Master. He delighted in the panicked look that came across Jack's face at the sight of Ianto in danger.

"You're very fond of this man, aren't you?" The Master laid a possessive hand on the side of Ianto's face making the Welshman flinch and Jack snarl. "I'm sure I'll be able to use him to get some information out of you about Torchwood. I'll admit your team is a little bit more coordinated than last time. I'm still looking for that Welsh girl, and the annoying doctor, but I'm sure I'll find them soon. So tell me, Jack, any idea where they might be hiding? You'll have to tell me, since I can't read your bizarre, fixed-point-in-time mind "

Jack bit his lip and looked away. "Why haven't you just taken the memories from him like you have Kate and Jenny?"

The Master gave an exasperated sigh. "Your little pet took retcon when he was captured. His memory's a blank for the last couple days. No use to me at all except as a tool against you." He ruffled Ianto's hair. "Now what will it take to get you to talk, Jack? I could start breaking his bones. Or…" The Master paused and held up a finger, "I could toy with his mind like I have with the girl's, his frail little human mind might just snap. He's got such horrible memories, most of them your fault."

Jack spoke quickly. "I don't know where my team is. Gwen wrote contingency plans for any situation where I was captured and they were on their own. I specifically never read those plans, so I wouldn't be able to betray them."

The Master looked distinctly not amused. He released Ianto to slink closer to the bars of Jack's cell. "Now, you could be telling the truth. Which makes you and your little pet both useless to me. You won't stay dead, but he will. You could also be lying, which for your friend's sake I hope you are. Either way I intend to torture him until you admit the truth. If nothing else it should be amusing for me." The Master turned back to Ianto and tapped him very lightly with his index finger on the center of his forehead.

Ianto tumbled back, his calm control instantly gone. His eyes went wide at some sight within his mind. He began to tremble and sob, screaming Lisa's name, begging Jack not to kill her. The Master observed it all like a like a cat meeting a canary with a broken wing.

Beginning to stride away, he snapped his fingers, "put the Welshman in the cell with the freak. Watching his lover suffer might give the good captain a change of heart."

Jack's cell was opened and Ianto was unceremoniously tossed in. Jack caught the trembling man before he hit the floor. Upon seeing Jack through his memory-reliving haze, Ianto began to curse him, and struggled desperately to get away. Jack tried to hold him still, to calm him, but he couldn't.

While sustaining a black eye and none too few kicks he managed to carry the hysterical man over to the cell's only bunk. Ianto instantly scrambled to the far corner of the bunk, placing his back against the wall like a cornered rat. Jack tried to get close enough treat his cuts and bruises as best he could, which considering their current resources, mostly consisted of scrubbing off the dried blood with a wet handkerchief. Ianto was too hysterical though, and after getting clawed across the face Jack gave up. He withdrew to the opposite end of the cell.

Jenny tried to call to Ianto reassuringly through the bars, but he didn't seem to hear her. Her soft child's voice had no place in the world Ianto was trapped in. Kate retreated to her own bunk and averted her eyes. No need to see a friend frightened and helpless. She's spent quite enough of her life like that.

Eventually, hours later, Ianto did calm down as the memory finished playing out. He slumped against the wall, his eyes gradually coming back into focus. Jack watched him hesitantly.

Ianto motioned silently for Jack to come closer. Slowly, still expecting another outburst, Jack did. He sat on the very edge of the bunk. Ianto cringed at his proximity, but forced himself to overcome it. He leaned over to speak to him in a hushed voice. "I…I can't remember much, but I know help is on its way." This said, he wearily slumped into an exhausted faint. Jack helped ease him down, hiding both his despair and hope behind his own tired expression.

The guards came for Kate when she was fast asleep curled up in her coat. It was the first deep sleep she had had since her capture. She was groggy as the two guards pulled her from the cell. Kate wondered if the Master had given them specific orders not to let her get a solid footing, or if they were improvising. There was clearly no practical need for two grown men to so roughly manhandle such a small woman. Jenny watched angrily from a corner of the cell. She had learned by now that it was useless to try and fight the guards while she was trapped as a child. Where once her body had been a deadly weapon, she now lacked the strength to even bruise an opponent.

"If you cause her any more harm than you've been ordered to, I will track you down and kill you slowly when this is all over!" Jack yelled at the guards. They ignored him. Kate watched her surroundings intently as she was pulled through the ship. It was all ninety-degree angles, long corridors, and cool steel. It could have been made by almost any square-loving species, during any time period. There was no writing or insignia to hint at the ship's creators.

They passed through one more identical doorway and back onto the bridge where Kate, Jenny and Jack had first arrived. The guards released her and she shrugged away from them, rubbing her wrists resentfully. She looked up and breathed a secret sigh of relief to see Earth whole and unchanged through the massive window. From a distance it looked all right, anyway.

Then her eyes focused on the center of the room and she stumbled. Another nightmare among a litany of such waking dreams awaited her. The Master was standing beside her TARDIS, which bore its usual garden shed appearance. He stood behind a kneeling dark-haired girl, one hand solidly on her shoulder the other pressing a handgun against the back of her neck. Stephanie's eyes were closed, her breath slow, and her whole body trembling violently with fear.

The Master smiled at her over the girl's shoulder. "Yes, I know the gun is a bit barbaric. Personally, I prefer blades as my weapon of intimidation. However, I have it on good authority guns are what humans of your time period find most frightening. I do try so hard to accommodate the local culture." Kate glared at him, having no voice to curse him.

The Master twirled the weapon in his hand. "It does bore me having to resort to this cliché, you know, using a hostage to get what I want--it's so unoriginal. It's much more fun to tempt and corrupt. But you're determined to play the hero's part, so now I get to use the Achilles heel of that archetype against you."

Kate spat at him. The Master smirked. "I was originally hoping to try this particular threat with your mother as a hostage, but she's proving difficult to find, so this child will have to do. I saw in your memories that you did care about her very deeply once, even if you've abandoned her now. You'll protect her though; she reminds you too much of your lost innocence not to. Now no more preliminaries, open the TARDIS or I shoot her."

Kate wavered uncertainly on her feet. Stephanie's eyes shot open.

"Kate don't you fucking dare! He's going to kill me no matter what, so don't let him use me against you first." If tears hadn't been leaking out of her eyes her fearlessness might have seemed genuine.

The Master patted her condescendingly on the head. "I must say she's rather brave for a human, that or just very young. She hasn't lived long enough to fear death the way you and I have. Will you give her a chance to learn to curse the darkness, or do I end her now?"

"Don't listen to him!" hissed Stephanie.

Kate took a step forward and then drew back, shaking her head violently. The Master laughed.

"Ah, you want to save her, but you don't think I'll keep my word. Consider the situation, though. Your TARDIS is set to isomorphic controls, and neither of us knows how to change that. Which means I need your continued cooperation to use the TARDIS, not just get into it. Keep me happy and the girl lives."

Stephanie slumped and remained silent. Her fear for her life was finally winning out against her better intentions. She didn't have it in her to tell Kate to refuse the Master again.

Kate bowed her head in defeat. If she were nobler she might be able to refuse; after all, the universe mattered a lot more than the life of one frightened girl. But she didn't have the strength to watch a dear friend die. The hero in her caved in to the flawed mortal.

She walked to the TARDIS and laid her hand against the door. She still had to find a way around the anti-coercion program she had created. She had made it years ago though, when her own psychic ability and understanding of her bond with the TARDIS had been weaker. It was surprisingly easy to lock her subconscious away from her beloved ship and give it access to only a shallow surface level. On this level she thought the command, "Open."

The TARDIS wavered uneasily at first. It knew something was wrong. She could feel it nudging gently at her mind and shoved it back. It broke her heart to do so, like kicking a dog. She repeated her order in her mind, "Open." There was a pause and then the lock clicked and the door slid open.

The Master released Stephanie, shoving her towards the guards. "Take the girl down to the cells. Do not harm her." The guards were gentler with Stephanie, helping her to her feet and leading her away. Whether this was because they hesitated to be rough with one of such a young age, or obedience to the Master, Kate could not tell.

Kate watched Stephanie go silently, holding her gaze until she was gone. The Master laid a hand on Kate's shoulder, making her flinch. "See, like all gods I can be merciful," He whispered in her ear.

Kate shook him off angrily. The Master just grinned in triumph. "I must say I'm glad I took your voice. It spares me having to listen to whatever speech or curse you might make now. I prefer my minions silent."

He motioned into the TARDIS. "Now you go in first, in case you've felt the need to set any traps. Just remember, try anything and I still will kill the girl."

Kate obeyed and went in first. She could feel the TARDIS tense when the Master stepped over the threshold, ready to expel him if she gave the command. She mentally soothed the TARDIS like a frightened horse.

The Master took in the golden light of the TARDIS like a king surveying his domain, running his hand along the console possessively. He made an undignified yelp of surprise as the metal burned him. He sucked on his hand and whirled to glare at Kate. She shrugged. The TARDIS was acting on its own initiative. The Master thrust his hands into his pockets, eyes narrowed now as if threatening the ship itself.

"Now, to business. You should be relieved to know I don't even need you to do anything partially unethical today, just send out a message to the only other TARDIS in existence. The frequency is Gamma Delta five two Alpha into the ships communications frequency."

Keeping a cautious eye on the Master, Kate did. The ship made a sound much like a phone ringing, and a fuzzy holographic screen popped up over the console. After a moment there was another beep and the image solidified into that of the interior of another TARDIS. A skinny young man with ruffled brown hair blinked at the screen and fiddled with a blue screwdriver until the image came into focus completely. "Hi there, whoever you are. Hold on a minute, I've almost got the transmission solidified," he told the screen in a chipper manner.

He dropped the screwdriver when he saw who was on the other end. "Master?"

"Ah, Doctor, I love hearing you say my name."

"You're dead. I watched you die. I grieved. I burned your body."

"And yet, as you can see, I was not quiet dead."

"How?" The Doctor pulled on a pair of glasses and blinked, not completely believing what he saw.

"It was simple, really. As usual I had a back up plan. When it was clear I had lost, Lucy shot me. I put my consciousness into a ring as I died. Lucy retrieved the ring. Then I took possession of her body, and regenerated as a Time Lord. Poor dear didn't realize her mind was going to be erased completely."

"That's creepy even for you."

"I try to be original."

"I'm assuming this isn't a social call. What do you want?"

"What, you think I don't just seek your charming company? No? Alright then, the surrender of you and your TARDIS would be a good place to start."

"Which I would do why?"

"Because I have your daughter."

The Doctor's eyes went wide with shock and desperate hope. "Jenny? Is that you? Did you regenerate?" he asked Kate.

Kate shook her head. The Master laughed. "Oh no Doctor, Jenny is locked away safely. I even put her in the form of a child to keep her out of trouble." He pointed at Kate "This girl is Rodageit's kid. Remember him? Mad scientist sort of fellow, went to school with us, always blowing stuff up?"

The Doctor nodded slowly, still not quite believing the Master. The Master continued, "Apparently he fancied humans, or at least got stuck on earth long enough to develop a taste for them. I found his half-blood daughter there."

"And she's working for you now?" The Doctors eyebrows knit. He was looking at the Master, but he was asking Kate. She shook her head forcefully and stamped her foot for emphasis. She was really getting sick of having only one way of expressing herself.

The Master waved his hand dismissively. "Yes, but under coercion and blackmail of course. She'd happily strangle me if she could. I think her propensity to violence shows promise. I might be able to cultivate it to my advantage, especially now that I've separated her from the goody-two-shoes influence of your brat. They had a nauseatingly cute pair bond; I was quiet happy to sever it when I de-aged Jenny."

The less malicious of the two male Time Lords seemed to be having a rather hard time taking all this in. The former prime minister gave an annoyed huff.

"Well enough about the younger generation. They're rather boring, anyway. We both know this is about us."

Kate could have sworn the Doctor smiled ever so slightly. "It always has been." He straightened up. "Surely we don't need to bring anyone else into our fight, do we? Release your hostages and come away from Earth, then I will gladly surrender."

The Master seemed almost tempted, but still suspicious. "Will you give me your TARDIS?"

"You know I can't do that." The Doctor looked truly sorry.

"Well then I can't confine this to just us. I expect you to appear at these coordinates ready to surrender. If not, I can't be accountable for the state of your daughter's health. Kate, cut the transmission."

Kate did. She watched the image of the strange man fade to static. She wondered sadly if the skinny bloke in the suit and glasses was really all the hope Earth had left.


	14. Chapter 14

For once the guards did not throw her into her cell

Chapter 14

For once the guards did not throw her into her cell. They seemed to sense she might in fact be growing in the Master's favor, and making more of an enemy of her might not be wise.

Stephanie was dozing fitfully on her hard bunk, her sleeping limbs tangled into a tight protective ball. Jenny, as usual, was buried in Kate's coat. Jack and Ianto were curled together on their cell's bunk, arms protectively locked, foreheads resting on shoulders.

One guard delighted in raking the butt of his gun across the bars, waking all of the sleeping prisoners. Stephanie awoke with a gasp and looked around her surroundings in panic, not remembering where she was. She saw Kate and her eyes widened. She sobered and sat up slowly.

Jack and Jenny sprang to their feet to greet Kate as the cell door clanged behind her. Ianto looked at her with sleepy concern, but did not bother to rise. Kate met no one's gaze and merely slumped towards her bunk.

"Did he hurt you again?" Jack's voice sounded just a little desperate from the helplessness he was feeling.

Kate shook her head. Jack breathed a sigh of relief. Jack reached through the bars and tried to take her hand but she shrugged it off. "Kate, it's okay. Stephanie told us what happened, we don't blame you for opening the TARDIS. I would have done the same."

Kate just looked at him wearily and curled up on her bunk under her coat. Jack's words were reassuring, but she still felt like a traitor. She had failed at the one thing she had been determined to do, keep the Master out of her TARDIS. Surely there had to have been some other way out of that situation, one that would have kept both Steph and the TARDIS safe.

Jenny scrambled back up on the bunk. She stroked Kate's tangled hair reassuringly with her small hands. It was the touch of a friend, maybe even a sister, but not of the bond mate Kate had lost. Kate felt the emptiness in her mind where Jenny had been even stronger. The presence of her child form made the absence of her true self even worse. Gently she pushed away the child. She buried her face in the reassuring wooly smell of the coat, ignoring Jack and Jenny's continued attempts to solace her.

"Stop it with the self pity!" snapped Stephanie suddenly. "None of us have the energy to comfort you."

Kate half sat up and blinked at her. Stephanie's expression softened.

"You let the Master into the TARDIS and that is bad. But you saved my life and for that I'm grateful. If you're going to find a way to defeat him, you can't be paralyzed by regret."

Kate nodded slowly. She wished she had the words to say that she was all right, that she understood. But she didn't so she just nodded her head and smiled weakly. Stephanie seemed to accept this.

"Now sleep, who knows when you'll have the chance again."

When Kate woke there was food. There was a good bit more than the meager amounts than there had been before, stale bread and some sort of gruel, instead of just gruel. She supposed it was a reward for opening the TARDIS.

She gave most of her share to Jenny. She told herself it was because she didn't want to deal with a cranky child. The truth was, her stomach felt almost too knotted to eat. Had she been her normal self, Jenny would have refused the extra food, but with a child's mind she lacked the empathy to understand the gift, or that an end to her hunger meant a continuance of Kate's.

The Master arrived a bit later. He appeared to be more in business mode than torture mode, as if something was distracting him. He was hurting them solely to get something done, not his own amusement, a rarity for the Master.

He had Ianto brought out and sparked another memory, this time of the cybermen attacking Torchwood London. Ianto reacted in a similar panic as the time before. "I can keep doing this until he begs you to kill him just to end the pain." The Master informed Jack curtly. "Just tell me where the rest of your team is and I'll stop. I know you don't care about them as much as you do this man."

Jack just glared at him and tried to calm the panicked Ianto. The Master shrugged and had Jenny and Kate brought out. He didn't hurt Jenny. He lifted the angry child from the guard's arms and held her as if she were his niece. She wriggled angrily and tried to bite him.

He just tapped her very lightly on the forehead, instantly calming her. "Oh, give it a rest. I just want to check a memory. You haven't got enough psychic ability for this to even hurt." He laid two fingers against her temple for a moment, and the girl's eyes went blank. Then her drew them back and she resumed her attempts to get away.

The Master unceremoniously handed her back to the guard. He turned his mercurial gaze on Kate. She shivered and involuntarily tried to back away. The guards held her fast. She hated how she couldn't hide her fear. The Master made that alarming smile of his.

"This, on the other hand, will hurt quite a bit whether you resist or not." Something in her snapped. She wouldn't let him hurt her again, damn the consequences. She slapped one booted heel down on one the guard's foot, and elbowed him in the gut. Jack saw his opportunity and grabbed the other guard through the bars, slamming his head back against them hard.

Kate snatched at the berretta that hung at the collapsing guard's side, pulled the trigger and fired off a shot. The Master reeled back, cursing in pain, clutching at his head. The conscious guard regained the upper hand, getting well away from the cell bars so Jack couldn't get him. He hit Kate in the back of her head with his rifle butt, and as she reeled, another trapped her arms painfully behind her back.

"You little bitch!" snarled the Master. Blood dripped profusely from a shallow wound on his cheek. He backhanded her hard.

She spit at him and he struck her again. Her vision blurred but gradually came back into focus.

The Master cupped her chin with his right hand, smearing his blood across her face. "And I thought you were making such progress." He clucked like a disappointed teacher. "Now what I'm about to do would hurt, normally, but now I'm going to go out of my way to make it as horrid as possible."

His hand was cold against her temple and then there was burning. She tried to fight back, cross the link into the Master's mind again, but he was ready this time. She heard the most terrible scream, and realized it was her own. It was as if a hot knife were cutting apart her brain, a part of herself was being torn away.

Jack banged his hands against the bars yelling at the Master to let Kate go. He knew it was futile, even as the guard shot him, but his nature would not allow him to be silent.

The Master eventually released Kate and drew back, holding something bright and glowing in his hand. If she had eaten more she would have happily been sick on her tormenter's shirt.

"What did you take?" Demanded Steph, speaking for the first time since the Master had entered the room. Her voice held more bravado then she felt.

"Bit of her essence. Shiny, isn't it? Now that she's fooled the TARDIS once, this is all I need to get past the isomorphic controls." The Master rolled the glowing ball between his hands. He patted Kate on the shoulder. "As fun as this is, I can't do it too often without destroying your mind completely, as opposed to the fun warping I've been doing so far. I'll still get to blackmail you into piloting the TARDIS most of the time."

He nodded to the guard and he unlocked the cell, throwing Kate back in roughly. As soon as the door clanged back shut, the Master shot him in the back with his laser screwdriver, and then the unconscious guard in a similar manner. He grinned at the horrified faces of the prisoners.

"I don't tolerate incompetence; try and keep that in mind." He pocketed the screwdriver and walked off, absentmindedly tossing the ball from hand to hand. Kate didn't try to get up. Had there ever been a time she wasn't in pain? She could feel the fresh wound in her psyche, like having all the skin scraped off a knee. It would grow back mostly, just take a while and be painful. There were more gaps in her memory now, which she suspected she would never get back. Jenny hovered around her, "Kate, Kate, are you alright?" Stephanie looked through the bars, her face a mask of worry. Jack was still dead, and Ianto was muttering to himself in the corner, screaming periodically.

Kate stumbled over to the bars and clasped Stephanie's hands, trying to assuage her worry. It didn't work, but she seemed slightly comforted. They both sat down side by side leaning against the bars, one hand still clasped, as if they were still children.

Kate remembered they had sat like this many years ago the night Stephanie's mother left.

Jenny scrambled up into Kate's lap.

"I can help if you let me."

Kate tilted her head to the side.

"I'm getting more of a hang of this younger brain. I can fix some of the broken bits in your mind."

Kate nodded and Jenny leaned up to press their foreheads together. Her presence was soft like a puppy's fur. She was completely non-threatening, because she was incapable of doing harm, as inconsequential as a summer breeze. So different from the Jenny Kate had known. The subtle strength of soul and will was gone, replaced by true innocence, as blank as the page of a poet with writer's block.

She carefully shifted through Kate's mind like cool water over a fire's ash. Everything that she touched began to heal, all the pain she found eased. When she slipped back out of her mind as quietly as she had entered, Kate felt at ease. Still tired and stunned, but better. Even the ringing in her head had ceased. The child was already asleep in her lap, having used more energy than expected.

Kate still couldn't really deal with Jenny's new form, but she could deal with a sleeping child. She shifted her very carefully so that her head was properly supported, then leaned back against the bars.

She glanced over and met Stephanie's eyes. She wished she could somehow promise her she would get them out of there. She seemed to understand, though, because she smiled very weakly, before drifting back to sleep herself.

Help arrived the next day. Three new guards showed up, apparently to fetch one of them. As soon as they saw the guards approaching, Jack realized something was clearly off. One of them had his military cap pulled down low over his face, as if he was trying to hide it. He also appeared slighter than the average soldier.

The other two looked like a normal guards with the classic chiseled chin and solid builds, except one was oddly familiar. Jack sprang to his feet as he recognized whom he was. He was a sergeant in the Untied Kingdom's branch of UNIT, Joseph Black. As the slight guard got closer, he recognized him too.

"Owen!" Yelled Jenny as she and Kate ran to the bars. Ianto sat up from where he had been dozing fitfully. Owen held a finger up to his own lips signaling them all to be silent. Quickly he and the other soldier unlocked all three cells. "Who needs evacuation and who can help fight?" asked the UNIT soldier briskly.

"All the civilians and Ianto should be evacuated," Jack told him. Ianto protested and Kate stamped her feet. Jack waved them off.

"Ianto, you're too hurt to be of any use, Kate, I'm not wholly convinced you're completely sane right now. You are both getting out of here."

"Like hell!" snapped Ianto, leaning against the wall for support.

"You both leave. That's a direct order."

Ianto gave Jack an angry look but complied. Kate didn't.

"We don't have time for this," hissed Owen. "Sergeant Black, take the kid, the teenage girl and Ianto and get out of here. Jack, we need Kate to get close to the Master, she's going to have to stay."

Grudgingly, Jack nodded. Stephanie scooped up Jenny and placed her on her back while the soldier lent a shoulder to the limping Ianto. There was no time for goodbyes as they headed off in the direction of the shuttle bay.

Owen, Jack, Kate and the remaining guard headed for the bridge. They moved at a steady walk, playing the role of prisoners and guards. The Master had in fact ordered Kate to be brought to the bridge so no one questioned them. "So what's the plan?" demanded Jack quietly.

"We're doing a joint maneuver with the Doctor's help. Tosh is in the central control room disabling the ship's defense systems and shielding as we speak so the TARDIS can beam in."

"I thought Tosh was dead!" gaped Jack.

Owen grinned, "Our girl is a little harder to kill than with one blast of a laser screwdriver. She's been experimenting with a personal force field; she was only knocked out."

"And Gwen? Where's she?"

"Ms. Cooper and Dr Martha Jones are organizing the UNIT task force that's going to beam up as soon as the shields are down to deal with the Master's soldiers," said the UNIT soldier.

"Since when does UNIT have teleportation technology?"

"Since Tosh figured out how to harness Rift energy in conjunction with the TARDIS and the Doctor's help," said Owen

"So how are we bringing down the Master?" asked Jack.

"The Doctor said that if we could get him in he could capture him. He'll need Kate's help though."

"What does the Doctor need?"

"He needs the Master psychically distracted so he can make his move without the Master sensing him. He needs you to do that, Kate, by challenging the Master to a duel in neutral space."

Kate made a frustrated gesture of confusion; Jack interpreted for her. "What the hell is neutral space?"

"The Doctor said the Master would know. It's just about exactly what it says on the tin, it's a mental space two Time Lords can create in the mind of a third person. It allows them to fight in a space where their mental strength is about even and it comes down to wits and strength of will. Jack you get to be the neutral space, since it would kill a normal human."

Kate tilted her head to the side, silently voicing how she didn't quite believe the Master would agree to this.

"Don't worry, he'll want to do this," said Jack. "He has too much pride not to. I've been his prisoner before, he could never resist a challenge or a game, any way to cause defeat on a whole new level."

"And this won't be a fight you can win. The Doctor assured me of that. He'll try to intervene before the Master can defeat you. If he does he'll be able to get a sort of control over your mind that goes far beyond hypnotism. You'll still be you, but his willpower will be yours," Owen shrugged apologetically.

"How will Kate know how to do this?"

"The Doctor said it would be instinctive."

_Lovely,_ thought Kate. _This Doctor fellow just expects me to sacrifice myself and trust him to save me before the last minute._ She had long since learned not wait for a rescue.

Jack laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "He won't let you down. I'd trust this man with my very soul."

Kate couldn't help but think _that's because he's probably let you die too many times for you to trust him with your life. _The time for talk ended abruptly as they reached the doors of the bridge. They fell back into their roles of prisoners and guards. Owen whispered, "This is where I get off, can't risk the Master recognizing me." He stepped into a side corridor and was gone.

The Master was waiting by Kate's TARDIS, tapping his foot in impatience. "About time, how long does it take you lot to fetch a prisoner?" he asked the guard.

His eyes narrowed when he saw Jack. "And why did you bring the freak?"

Jack took a deep step forward. Time to go into brave hero mode; it was just an act like any other, and he could play the part. "I asked him to. You'll need me to interpret for Kate."

The Master quirked an eyebrow, "So aside from the obvious oddity of you ordering my guards around, what are you playing at?"

"Kate wants to challenge you to a duel in neutral space. If she wins, you'll let us go and leave Earth alone. If you win, well, you know how it works. You'll have control of her mind in a way that will still let you use her to pilot the TARDIS, but make her unable to disobey a command."

The Master laughed and gave the silent girl a quizzical look. "Well, you're an impertinent thing, aren't you? What makes you think I'd bother? I've already got your ex girlfriend, your current girlfriend, and your mentor the Freak. I don't need to control your mind, I've already got you blackmailed."

Jack forced a fake grin and spoke for Kate again. "Yeah, but you never know when she'll turn on you. We saw that yesterday, now didn't we?"

The Master bared his teeth in a snarl. "Fine then, little girl, let's play. You clearly haven't been punished enough yet for that scratch you gave me yesterday. What human would you like to destroy the mind of to do this? The frightened Welsh girl might be a good choice."

"No, I'll be the neutral place."

The Master scowled. "You? You're a fixed place in time full of vortex energy."

"What, scared of me?" mocked Jack.

"Hardly." The Master gave him an almost lecherous grin as he stepped forward. "Perhaps you will even enjoy being the battleground between two Time Lords again."

Jack flinched in spite of himself. Kate quickly reclaimed the situation by making a mock courtly bow to Master. He returned the bow with an almost Shakespearian flair.

They each place a single hand on opposite sides of Jack's head. They all closed their eyes and tumbled into darkness.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

The first thing Kate heard was music--WWII swing dancing music, of all things. She and the Master were dancing in an empty ballroom full of British flags. There was no band, no other dancers, yet they could hear music, and voices. The sound of falling mortars echoed beyond the room.

They were dressed in the clothes of the period; the Master wore an airman's uniform that could only seem creepy on him. Kate wore a simple green cotton dress and high-heeled shoes she would normally not be able to move in, yet in this place she somehow could.

She didn't know this particular dance either, but somehow the pattern of it hung in the front of her mind. "Did you create this place?" She clutched at her throat in wonder as she realized she had her voice back, at least in this dream world.

The Master smirked at this and then replied, "No, this place belongs to our freakish host. He has quite a World War Two fetish, doesn't he?"

"Certainly less disturbing than your obsession with control."

"Maybe, but I've got better taste in music." The Master dipped her and then let go. Kate threw out an arm and caught herself with her hand, jarring her wrist painfully before springing back to her feet. The world changed, and suddenly Voodoo Child blared all around them. The comforting ballroom shifted to an empty disco full of flashing lights. The Master was back in his suit, and Kate was still in the forties dress.

She saw him draw the screwdriver from his inside pocket in time to spring out of the way. If he could manipulate the environment, then so could she. She felt the reassuring weight of her weapon of choice in her hand. She sprayed the Master directly in the eyes with her little pink can of mace.

He stumbled back clawing at his eyes in pain. Kate willed them into her own place of power. They were on earth in the forest behind Stephanie's house, standing on the tree house. She turned the mobility limiting dress back into her normal trousers, and tank top. The Master had nearly overcome her attack as the world solidified around them. Clearly damage in this dream world didn't last as long as it did in the real one.

Kate rushed forward trying to knock the Master off the platform. He saw her coming and held his ground. For a moment they grappled, and then they went down rolling and scrambling across the platform. The Master was a bit stronger; after all he was a grown man, albeit a skinny one, and Kate was a small woman. Kate, however, had fear and desperation on her side. Neither of them was much of a fighter, though. The Master had always relied more on his cunning than his fists and Kate usually ran away before things came to blows. They stumbled across the small platform, throwing awkward punches and kneeing and kicking each other sharply.

With a terrifying jolt they rolled over the edge. They struggled for a half second in the air, and the Master ended up on the bottom taking the full force of the fall as they made contact with the soft earth.

The tree house was high enough off the ground to break an arm, or at least crack a skull. The Master however seemed almost uninjured, or was good at hiding it. He got a knee up and shoved Kate off. She tumbled into the grass and stumbled to her feet.

The Master took advantage of her momentary distraction and changed the world again. They were in a meadow of red grass under two distant red suns. In the distance was a giant glass-domed citadel. "Gallifrey!" gasped Kate. She knew it well from her father's journals.

"A place you will never see, half-blood," laughed the Master. He seemed incredibly at ease in these surroundings. He flicked his hand and a rapier appeared in it. As he lunged at her, Kate quickly created one of her own, blocking his strike.

She had never held a sword before in life, yet now she knew how to wield it, almost as if a voice were whispering in her ear. "Jack" she murmured as she parried another blow and then struck out.

She was in his mind after all, he was helping her in whatever way he could, Sharing his skills and knowledge, as she needed them. This filled her with a new courage. She wasn't playing hero all on her own. She held her ground and continued to look for an opening as the Master intensified his assault.

They flitted across the open field as graceful as any dancers. Everyone knows dancing is just a metaphor for sex or sometimes love; this, however, wasn't a metaphor for anything other than what it was. It was a fight of pure animosity, a power struggle, plain and simple.

The Master snarled when she managed to nick his shoulder. "I'm tired of this game. I think I'll end it now."

As the very earth shifted under her Kate realized how much the Master had been holding back in order to draw out the game. She lost her footing and he was on her in a second, a dagger, hidden in his sleeve, now solidly in his left hand. "You lose," he whispered in her ear as he drove it into her throat.

But before he could do more than pierce the skin the world shattered. They were back on the Master's ship, all three of them were tumbling to the floor from the rude awakening. They were surrounded by the sounds of gunfire. There were bodies scattered around the room, both the Master's mercenaries and red capped UNIT soldiers.

The Doctor was kneeling beside the Master, hands pressed against his head. The Master remained still for a moment, and then he began to writhe with his eyes still closed. Suddenly his eyes sprang open and he shoved the Doctor away hard, slamming his head against the floor.

He rose to his feet, drawing his screwdriver in one fluid moment and blasting the Time Lord. The Doctor writhed in pain and curled around himself, paralyzed, as all his muscles clenched at once.

Jack leapt at the Master, and he blasted him too, dropping him dead. He made the mistake of ignoring Kate while all this was going on. She scrambled over to the familiar, and now very dead, body of the UNIT soldier who had helped free her and the other prisoners. She snatched up his gun, turned, and shot the Master.

She wasn't a great shot, but at close range it was hard to miss. The bullet pierced the Master's chest, sending him tumbling back. He landed hard, already soaked in dark red blood. From the floor the Doctor made a despairing wailing sound, but still couldn't move.

Kate ran to the Master, pulling the aspirin tablets from her pants pocket and crushing them in the bit of cloth they were wrapped in. The Master was already glowing with regeneration energy when Kate reached him. Later she would have liked to tell herself that she hesitated, that she didn't kill without thinking twice, but that would have been a lie. With steely eyes she ground the powder into the open wound, mixing it with his blood.

The Master screamed as the poison hit his blood stream. The glow around him faded, and with one final pained jerk, he died. Kate slumped to a sitting position as the adrenalin faded. She doubted she had ever seen anything quite so hideous as the face of her tormenter contorted with death.

The Doctor regained the ability to move and crawled across the floor to the Master, clutching the body to him and sobbing, and whispering hoarsely, "Please, please don't leave me, not again, please!"

After a moment his eyes fell on Kate, a frightening snarl crossed his almost innocent face. He leapt over the body clutching her roughly by the shoulders and shook her. "You killed him!" He yelled. "Why did you kill him? You didn't have to kill him."

Kate shook her head.

The Doctor dragged them both to their feet, lifting Kate by her shirt, an impressive feat for such a skinny man. The look of fury and desperation in his eyes terrified her. "He didn't have to die this time!" He looked much like a wrathful god. Kate was too transfixed to try and escape.

"Doctor, put her down." Jack's voice was full of gentleness. He laid a comforting hand on the Doctor's shoulder. "You're hurting her." Well, actually more freaking her out than anything else, but that was beside the point at the moment.

The Doctor blinked and stared at his hands as if just realizing what he was doing. Very carefully he set her back on her feet. Jack pulled the Doctor close and hugged him, turning him away from the sight of the Master's body.

"Where's your TARDIS, Doctor?" Jack whispered. The Doctor mumbled something, and Jack slowly propelled him from the room. The Doctor followed as tamely.

Kate watched them go silently. She wished Jack hadn't left her alone, but for the moment she was wholly forgotten. She raised her hand to brush the tangled hair from her face, only to find it stained with drying blood. It smelled more coppery than her own half human blood, quite a bit like Jenny's, actually. Her stomach turned, and, as always happened after she killed someone, she was violently ill in one of the waste bins by the wall.

The Master's soldiers surrendered to UNIT almost immediately after his death. Whatever manner of hypnosis he had used was gone and they became nothing more than scared mercenaries, who knew when it was in their best interest to give up.

Early in the battle both sides had taken heavy losses, the worst of the firefighting starting soon after Kate and the Master began their duel. Kate was infinitely glad Jenny and Stephanie had gotten off the ship by that point. Gwen suffered a slight bullet wound to the shoulder, and Owen a twisted ankle, but beyond that Torchwood had no casualties.

UNIT rounded up the defeated soldiers, and when the Doctor eventually reemerged from his TARDIS, he helped Tosh beam them all back to earth. UNIT wanted to take the Master's body but the Doctor refused to let them, quickly moving it to his TARDIS with Jack's help.

The spaceship proved surprisingly easy to dispose of. Tosh was able to learn from the logs that the Master had apparently had it delivered from a ship building company several galaxies away. He'd done it with an impressively forged credit account. All that the Doctor had to do was call the ship building company and a group of very embarrassed Clavians came to repossess it within a day.

Kate used her TARDIS to ferry herself, Gwen, Owen and Tosh back to earth. Jack went with the Doctor. She was glad to be back in her ship. Before they left she and Tosh quickly checked it for any damage the Master might have caused when he was in it alone, but they could find nothing.

They couldn't figure out where the Master had gone either. He had wisely destroyed the records. The ship responded to Kate as it always had, and she could only pray there was no greater damage. When she was assured, she hit the few necessary buttons and sent them back to the Hub.

Her mother caught her in a close embrace the moment she stepped out the door. "My baby! You're alive." Kate clung to her mom, glancing behind her to see Jenny, Ianto and Stephanie waiting.

Tosh, Gwen and Owen followed her out of the TARDIS. Janice smiled at them. "You brought her back to me."

"We promised we would," assured Gwen.

There was a familiar wailing sound and the Doctor's TARDIS materialized next to Kate's.

The Doctor and Jack stepped out. They were wearing completely different clothes than when they had stepped in moments before in the earth timeline. Kate wondered if they had taken a few days to deal with the Master's body. The Doctor seemed more at peace.

He surveyed the room. His eyes fell on Jenny and he ran to her, scooping up the child and swinging her around. Jenny was laughing and giggling by the time he set her down, kneeling beside his daughter. "I thought you died."

"I did dad, but I came back after you left."

"I'm sorry, I should have waited."

Jenny stroked his face with a small hand. "It's alright, I forgive you."

"Thank you." The Doctor hugged her again then stood up, running a hand through his hair. "Um if you'd like I can restore you to your normal self. I've got he Master's screwdriver, and I've reset the isomorphic controls. This should only take a minute unless you want to try growing up the normal way."

Jenny glanced at Kate quickly and then shook her head. "No, I want to go back to who I was."

The Doctor clicked a few buttons on the laser screwdriver. As he was about to turn it on, Kate held up a hand to stop him and quickly slipped off her coat and put it around Jenny. This made Jack smirk, but she gave him a warning glare.

"Ready?" asked the Doctor. Jenny nodded and he zapped the screwdriver. The change was clearly painful but she didn't cry out. One moment there was a child, and the next a fully-grown young woman was standing there adjusting the coat. She stretched, feeling the full length of her arms and legs.

She did a few experimental kicks and punches, enjoying the strength in them. "I hated being that helpless. How does anyone stand being a kid?" Then she noticed Kate standing beside her and smiled in a way that would have looked wicked on anyone else. She caught the redhead off balance and snogged her solidly, making everyone in the room feel either embarrassed, interested, or discreetly look the other way. The Doctor seemed mildly disturbed to see the woman who had killed the love of his life embracing his daughter.

"Damn, I missed that," Jenny laughed releasing Kate to catch her breath. Had she been able to speak Kate might have agreed.

"Oh, you're still missing your voice then, aren't you? Dad, can you fix that?"

"Yes, but you're probably going to have to let go of her first." The Doctor adjusted the laser screwdriver again. Kate instinctively backed away when he pointed it at her. She remembered the look of pure hatred she had seen in his eyes before, even if at this particular the moment he seemed mostly disinterested.

The Doctor sighed. "I won't hurt you." Kate remained ill at ease.

"You can trust him." Jack reassured her. Jack's word was enough and she stood still. With a calm professionalism reminiscent of a real doctor, the Doctor gently pressed the laser screwdriver against her throat. She felt the severed connections latch back together, the lost bonds in her brain blossom back into existence. True to form the first words out of her mouth were somewhere along the lines of "bloody hell!" After that she didn't actually have much to say.

Kate's mom had watched in silence until this point, but now that Kate's voice had been restored she could not wait any longer to confront the Doctor.

She stepped forward. "So you are the Doctor, yes?"

The Doctor nodded.

"You destroyed all of Gallifrey and the Time Lords during the war?" There was something frighteningly cold in the way the widow said this.

He nodded again slowly, his face darkening.

"My husband, Kate's father, his name was Rodageit. I will only ask this once, Doctor. Was he still alive when you killed everyone?" There was a sharpness to her tongue now.

The Doctor met her eyes sadly. "Yes. I know for a fact he was."

The blow knocked him off his feet and sent him sprawling to the floor. It was an impressive punch for a middle-aged Irish woman who had never hit anyone before in her life. Jack moved to stop her, but she made no other move of aggression. To the contrary, she offered the Doctor a hand up, and with a confused frown he accepted it.

"I can't forgive you, but hatred is to heavy a thing for me to carry about. Let's start our acquaintance as a blank slate."

The Doctor nodded his assent.

Janice returned his nod and then turned her attention to Kate. "Right, now I want to know what happened on that space ship. I suspect everyone else would as well."

"And I'd like to know what happened on earth," added Jack. "But let's not do it standing. Why don't we reconvene around the couch?"

"I'll start the coffee," Ianto was already acting his old self again, all traces of recent trauma hidden behind his professional smile. He had learned the value of keeping routine. Life often slipped out of his control, but he could still manage coffee.

Soon with warm ceramic in hand they all gathered and compared their accounts of the last several days.


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

The rest of that night was a bit of a dull blur. No one had exactly had a solid meal or a good night's sleep in a while, but things still needed to be done, reports filed, prisoners dealt with. But first there was takeout Chinese--a lot of it.

Stephanie seemed to be hanging onto her sanity remarkably well for a thirteen-year-old who had so recently been kidnapped, threatened at gunpoint, and imprisoned by an insane alien. Girls that age tend to be very resilient. She did, however, desperately want to go home.

There was just the slight problem of explaining her temporary disappearance to her parents and the Cardiff police. Figuring the easiest way out would be best, Jack gave her some retcon to give to her family and make them forget she had ever been missing. He made a quick call to the Cardiff police telling them that Stephanie had been found, and all record of her disappearance needed to be destroyed. When PC Andy made the mistake of asking Jack what had happened he got the usual "This is Torchwood business and top secret. Besides, it would take half a day to explain it all and then you wouldn't believe me anyway so why don't you just take my word for it." Jack didn't retcon Stephanie. She deserved that much after what she had been through.

There was a bit of a problem over where Kate and Jenny were going to go in the immediate future. The Doctor wanted Jenny to stay in his TARDIS while things were sorted out, Janice wanted to take Kate home right away, and the girls were very determined that they weren't going to stray so much as a foot form each other for the next month or so.

While this was being argued they dozed off curled together contently on the Hub couch. It would have been cruel to wake them. Janice gave up on the idea of going home and settled onto the other end of the couch, reassuringly close to the daughter she had thought she had lost again.

As dawn neared Ianto went below to take a nap in Jack's bunk, and Gwen went home to Rhys. Tosh and Owen retreated to their respective empty apartments. This left the Time Lord and the almost immortal, neither of whom really needed to sleep yet.

They went to deal with the prisoners. They could release them the next day with UNIT's help, but tonight they would check for any latent mental programming the Master might have left and then retcon them.

There were thirty mercenaries, all young men, usually not very bright, and most rather frightened. The Master seemed to have acquired the majority of them from America, but there were a few British and oddly enough a couple Germans mixed in. The Hub had a lot of cells and Jack had put each man in one of his own. Fear made the mercenaries easy to deal with. Jack just had to promise in his most calming/threatening voice that it was all going to be all right so long as they complied, and they usually did.

Jack would unlock the cell, the Doctor would take a brief look in the prisoner's mind, and then they would give him a cup of water with retcon in it and watch him drink it.

The trouble arose with one of the last mercenaries, an unremarkable, brown haired Englishman. He seemed calm until the Doctor tried to put his hand on the side of his head. His eyes went wide and he tried to bolt through the open door of the cell. Jack tackled him and brought the struggling man down with surprising ease. For a trained soldier the man didn't seem to know how to fight.

Jack managed to get the man's hands behind him and cuffed, and a knee in his back, but he still kept up his desperate struggle. If the Doctor hadn't been there Jack would have been sorely tempted to slam the mercenaries head on the floor.

"He's gone psycho. Hurry up and check him!" snapped Jack as he got an elbow in the ribs. The Doctor quickly knelt and put and hand on the side of the man's face. He instantly stumbled back as if he had been shocked.

"Drums?" he murmured. Suddenly his whole face lit up. "Master! You're alive! You saved your consciousness."

The prisoner spat, but stopped struggling. "Doctor, after all this time, I would have thought you'd realize that death won't have me. Now that the game is up I might as well get rid of this human body." He began to glow with regeneration energy. Jack scrambled off him quickly before the light could touch him.

The Doctor began to curse. "Stop that! You'll kill him like you did Lucy. Wait, please, we'll find something else to put your mind in."

The Master wasn't listening. The glow grew brighter and illuminated the dark hallways. In the spill of light his features shifted and returned to the handsome face of Harold Saxon.

He smiled at the Doctor with far more confidence than a man handcuffed and lying on the floor really ought to have. "Stop pouting, I know you're glad to see me."

The Doctor looked at him wearily, shoulders slumped almost as if in defeat. "Have you any idea what it was like having to burn your body again?"

"Probably delightfully excruciating. Now this floor is a bit chilly, mind getting me off it? Perhaps back to your cozy TARDIS?"

"I ought to leave you here, locked up in this cold dark cellar for the rest of the life you just stole from that mercenary."

The Master rolled his eyes. "Now, now, we both know your not going to leave me here with the Freak. You're far too lonely to do that."

Jack cast the Doctor a glance. He didn't want the Master in the Hub, the least complicated of all his concerns being that the Master would probably find a way to escape sooner or later and kill all of Torchwood while he was at it. On the other hand he didn't like the idea of the Doctor being alone on the TARDIS with the Master. The best thing to do would be to kill the Master again, but the Doctor would never allow that.

The Doctor knelt beside the Master with a sigh. "I am going to take you back to the TARDIS, but only because it's the one place I don't think you'll be able to escape from." His words would have been believable if he hadn't been brushing the Masters hair from his face with surprising gentleness.

"Goody. Do I get to remodel it again, return it to that nice red lighted color scheme?"

The Doctor gave him a withering look. The Master ignored it. "Now, are you going to get me off this bloody floor?"

With an exasperated sigh the Doctor helped the Master to his feet. Jack hovered closely and quickly got a hand over the Master's bound ones, to make sure he wasn't going to make another break for it. They led the Master through the dark halls of the vault back towards the first floor and the TARDIS.

"Are you really sure you want him on the TARDIS?" he asked the Doctor. "It won't be safe for Jenny to go with you if the Master is there."

"Ooh, does this mean he has to chose between me and his brat?" piped the Master happily

"I doubt she would be able to come with me anyway. She'll want to stay with Kate. I can already sense their link reforming, and with Time Lords a pair bonding is usually stronger than a blood tie." The Doctor was trying to keep his face neutral and failing, sadness seeping trough behind his eyes. Jack hated how the Doctor almost seemed to want to set himself up for loneliness.

"Doctor, there's no reason you have to go off on your own with just the Master. Dump him on some abandoned moon and travel with both Jenny and Kate. Problem solved."

The Doctor shook his head sharply. "No, I can't have Kate in my TARDIS, not after what she did."

The Master laughed at this. "So you won't live with your daughter's girlfriend because she killed me, but you'll live with me despite all the murders and atrocities I've committed? You've got a strange sense of justice, Doctor."

The Doctor stayed silent. Jack didn't bother to say anything either, just twisted the Master's bound hands as hard as he could. Jack knew the Doctor. What the Doctor really wanted was to be with the Master. He would think up any necessary excuse, make any sacrifice to justify it to himself. The Doctor loved Jenny, and he would protect her if he could, but she wasn't as important to him as the Master and never would be. He shared his DNA and a few hours with Jenny, he shared his past and soul with the Master.

They got the Master into the TARDIS and into a room the Doctor described as a "Zero Room". They pushed him into the room, closed the door, and the doorway melded into the wall. "That should hold him for now," the Doctor said quietly leaning his back against the wall where the door had been.

"How soon do you leave?" Jack asked.

"Before the others wake might be best. I think they'd all be happier thinking the Master was dead."

"You should still tell Jenny goodbye."

"I will. Walk with me. I need to get her and Kate some Gallifreyan books first. They deserve to know some of their own history and culture, even if I can't be here to teach them."

The Doctor pushed off from the wall and set off for the library. It was one of the few rooms of the TARDIS that the Doctor had not changed since his first regeneration. It was a beautiful place full of warm polished wood, soft chairs, and the comforting smell of old paper.

The books were put into some kind of order, but during his time on the TARDIS Jack had never been able to figure it out. The Doctor moved quickly, piling tomes in his arms, and once his arms were full he handed them to Jack.

Jack read the titles absentmindedly. "TARDIS Repair 101, Gallifreyan History: Rassilon to Modern Day, Basic Biology, A History of Music, Great Cricket Games of the 19th Century."

"I don't think they'll need a Cricket guide." Jack held the book back out to the Doctor.

The Doctor paused. "Hm, you're probably right. I couldn't do without that book anyway."

Once they were both weighed down with books they returned to the Hub. It was still peaceful, just about an hour or two after dawn. Everything was as they had left it. The Doctor set his armload of books down on one of the tables, and then went to the couch to wake up Jenny.

He had to half lean over Kate to very gently shake Jenny's shoulder. The blonde's eyes snapped open instantly with intense military alertness. She relaxed when she saw it was her father. Before she could speak, the Doctor shushed her.

"Sh, don't wake anyone else up. I just came to say goodbye, Jenny. I'm leaving now."

She looked very much like a hurt child in that moment. "Already? I just found you again."

"I'm sorry. Something's come up." Her eyes were damp, but she didn't cry. There was no way to deny this felt like another abandonment. "All right, Dad," she whispered.

"Take care of yourself." The Doctor kissed her on the cheek and fled before he could regret his decision. He half ran back across the Hub. Jack was waiting outside the TARDIS. When the Doctor reached his hand for the door, Jack covered it with is own. The Doctor met his eyes and Jack kissed him. There are a thousand different things a kiss like that can say with just soft meeting of the lips and an hand held to the back of the head.

With this one Jack said quite a few of them. _I still love you, I still admire you, you're still my hero, I miss you, you're always welcome here, I think you're making a bad choice, take care of yourself, don't let the Master break your heart any more than he already has._ When the kiss ended the Doctor ran a brief hand across the side of Jack's face and then turned and ducked into the TARDIS.

There was a whoop of sound, and then it was gone, and Jack was looking at a blank wall. Well, that was the Doctor for you, always running. Jack had been like that once too, but he didn't have that luxury anymore. He wondered if Ianto was awake. He could use a hug. He headed down to his quarters to see.

It was a windy winter morning two weeks later when they saw Kate and Jenny off. Kate and Jenny had clearly not expected all of Torchwood to show up when Kate had casually mentioned what time she and Jenny were departing from her back garden. But they had, and they had all brought presents of sorts.

Ianto pressed a box of earl grey tea into Kate's hands. "I don't know what you see in this stuff over coffee, but enjoy."

Owen had a plastic Red Cross medical kit. "I looked in the medical book you showed me. All of this stuff should be safe for both of you to use if you get hurt. I wrote the correct doses on the inside of the box"

Tosh gave them a clipped folder of all the records Torchwood had on Kate's TARDIS and the repairs she and Kate had done on it before Kate had had to flee.

Jack tried to convince them to take a gun. "My dad doesn't like guns," protested Jenny, "besides, I'm enough of a deadly weapon as it is." Kate, however, accepted the gun when Jenny was looking away, hiding it in one of the many pockets of her coat. Her morals were not as complicated as the blonde's.

Gwen had somehow gotten it in her head that they needed an electric teakettle. So she had brought one in a big white box with red bow on top. "You know, they're not getting married, you didn't have to get them such a wedding present." Owen teased her.

"You can give electric teakettles to people for things other than weddings," protested Gwen.

"But usually you don't. I mean, how often do you give a friend a kitchen appliance for their birthday?"

"Well, I think it's a very thoughtful gift," said Kate quickly, hoping to keep Gwen and Owen from having a spat.

"Yeah, she has a tendency to forget about the teakettle on the stove. Now maybe we don't have to worry about her setting the TARDIS on fire," piped Jenny. This was probably not the best thing to say in front of Kate's mom, who got a very troubled expression. She seemed to be having second thoughts about how easily she was letting her daughter leave. But she wasn't the sort of woman who liked to make scenes, so she just hugged Kate and then Jenny and told them to take care of each other, and she'd see them in two weeks. For all her insecurities she was a good mother; she knew when to let go.

With a final goodbye to everyone, Kate and Jenny went into the TARDIS. There was a whoop, a flash of light, and then nothing left but a patch of flattened hellebores where the garden shed had been.

-End

Authors Note: Thank you for reading. I greatly appreciate it. This is the end of this story, but not the series. I plan to write more stories with Kate and Jenny, both after this point in the time line and some short stories from earlier in their timeline before they reached earth. Keep an eye on my author profile and the stories will appear soon.


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